by Finegan, KT
the
thirteen
stones
KT Finegan
Published in 2016 by Betty Books
Copyright © 2016 KT Finegan
KT Finegan has asserted her right to be identified
as the author of this Work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9955000-0-6
ebook: 978-0-9955000-1-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue copy of this book can be found in the British Library.
Published with the help of Indie Authors World
DEDICATION
This book proved to me that dreams come true, so don’t worry about how to make them happen. Leave that to a higher power, instead spend your time doing what you love, and let go of the worrying. Miracles happen in magical ways that we can never expect. So I dedicate this book to the dreamer within us all. Don’t stop dreaming
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the MacLeod family for all of your faith, guidance and support, and special thanks to the magical editing of Christine McPherson. Thank you. To my family; my sister Elizabeth, thanks for putting up with me, niece Eli and nephew Oli, you are both my stars. Mum, Dad, and baby brothers Billy and Garry. We’ll meet again, I know that. Ian, what can I say apart from ‘every step of the way’ Cailean, another star. And to all my friends, those who have been with me forever, those I knew only for a while, and those I’ve yet to meet. Thank you for everything. And especially to the girls- Alice, Angela C, Angela M, Anne, Bernadette, Eileen B, Eileen R, Fiona, Frances, Grace, Hazel, Jen, Mairi, Mary, Mattie, Michelle, Shirley, Stephanie, Suzy, Wilma. Thanks to all of you for sharing my soul story, for your support, your encouragement and your friendship. And finally to my wonderful English teachers at Lochend Secondary School- Mr Mcleod and Mrs Irvine. Thank you for supporting a little girl who liked to write, this is the culmination of that. To all teachers out there, never underestimate your impact on the children you teach.
Foreword
We are delighted to have KT Finegan as the winner of the first Calum Macleod Memorial Publishing Prize (2015).
We sadly lost our son Calum to meningitis in October 2007. It was this tragedy that fuelled Sinclair’s desire to follow his passion for writing and led to him self-publishing his own crime fiction books. Our business - Indie Authors World, developed to help other writers follow their dreams and it seemed a fitting tribute to create a fundraising publishing prize to celebrate what would have been our son Calum’s 21st birthday. We had many wonderful entries which helped raise over £700 for the charity Meningitis Now.
The judges had a tough job choosing a winner but we all agreed that Karin’s emotive writing hooked us. We all wanted to know more about Kirsty and the mysterious thirteen stones. What had Kirsty’s beloved Grandmother’s death unleashed?
We were thrilled when we got to read the rest of the book. It is a great story on many levels with interesting characters and mysterious developments as Kirsty explores her family’s heritage and connection to the stones.
We hope that you will enjoy the book too and we wish Karin lots of success as she steps into her passion for writing.
Calum made such a difference to many people’s lives while he was on earth and we are so proud that his legacy is continuing to make a difference. If you want to know more about this year’s publishing prize please visit our website –
www.indieauthorsworld.com.
With love and gratitude,
Kim and Sinclair Macleod
1
Calloused hands had long ago carved Rest in Peace on most of the grey, moss-covered gravestones scattered across the old graveyard. It overlooked Lanark the small Scottish market town I called home, and I felt it was a constant reminder of their own mortality to the people who lived there. Along the old greying sandstone walls, pale pigeons and dark crows watched our procession as we walked in black clothes, shoes, hats and handbags. Silently, and moving slowly behind the coffin carried by the black-suited undertakers. No male relatives or friends were left to offer their strength, either emotional or physical, on this sad day, so it fell to strong-shouldered strangers to bear our burden. One of the birds sang a long, slow song of the dead and forgotten, and I shivered, cold in my body and with frozen feet and fingers.
The pain in my heart since hearing of the death of my grandmother had now spread to my head. My temples and behind my eyes burned and ached from shed and still unshed tears. As I looked around the graveyard, the pressure from the grey sky hanging only inches above my head added to my tension and feeling of claustrophobia. Here, at the highest point of the town, with the big expanse of sky, and the mountains in the distance, the wind ripped through my lightweight black jacket, right into my core. I doubted that I’d ever feel warm again.
We stopped at a newly-hacked hole in the ground, right at the centre of the graveyard. Around us, old stones lay on their sides, broken angels and crosses scattered in the dust, mixed up and weathered so badly there was no way of knowing where they had started. This was the oldest part of the graveyard, and where the blacksmiths, the bootmakers, the apothecaries, the weavers, and the stonemasons were buried. Long dead trades marked in looped script on old grave- stones for long dead souls.
Unlike the rest of the cemetery, these graves were unkempt; no flowers, no little solar-celled lamps, no plastic-coloured windmills, and no gold paint on shiny black marble. Stones here were from earlier centuries when the town thrived and some could afford to mark the passing of their loved ones in granite tombs. Names no longer in fashion, like Euphemia and Thomasina, in illegible etchings on ten foot high memorials barely hanging from the stone and flint walls surrounding the graveyard. Some graves were marked only by small stones or crosses, the names erased by time and weather. Others standing tall but broken, names, dates and loved ones faded away.
I felt my eyes fill again with frozen tears, my sight blurred, pain in my heart, and tight sobs escaping from my throat, even though I was trying to hold onto my grief. I knew that my grandmother had purchased a plot beside her mother’s grave a long time ago, but until this moment its purpose hadn’t really sunk in. All those visits to this place in brilliant sunshine with flowers cut from our garden, watching Granny tidying gravestones, picking up weeds and throwing away dead flowers. It hadn’t really meant much to me.
I had no feelings for those stones because that’s all they were to me. They were names from long before I was born. Not real people; people who cared for me, who loved me, fed me and hugged me. People who telephoned and wrote long letters with all the local gossip when I moved away. The thought that I’d never again hear my grandmother’s voice pierced my heart like a dagger of ice, and I gulped back the solid sadness in my throat.
I realised with a shock that the Minister had stopped talking, and was looking at me. I felt a flutter like a wing on my arm and a whisper in my ear from the smallest, teeniest little lady there. ‘A very old and dear friend’ was how she had introduced herself this morning at the undertakers. ‘Kirsty, dear… it’s time.’
I lifted heavy eyes and noticed that the Minister was offering some earth to me. No part of my body wanted to take it, but I didn’t have the words to
try to explain this to any of these people. Instead, my fingers found some soil and I realised with a fright that the coffin was now at rest, nestled deep down in the earth. How did that get there?
As I’d stood with head bent low, the undertakers had done their job, silently releasing the ropes and sliding the satin wood down into the ground. There was a putrid, dank odour in my nose and my stomach churned. In church for the earlier service, I hadn’t dared look at the coffin. It felt so final. Knowing my flesh and blood, my beloved granny lay within it, was too much.
I added a little white rosebud I had snapped from one of the wreaths, and sent it down with all my love and longing for this beautiful woman who had given so much to me. I heard the Minister say Granny’s name… ‘Kirsten Cairngeal Wallace… ashes… dust’. I was tuning in and out, and felt myself focus on the undertaker standing a short distance away. Anything to keep calm and in control when I wanted to scream and shout and cry, but not in front of all these people, strangers to me. I felt I had to hold on to show Granny I could be strong. For her.
The undertakers were a small family-owned business, and had ‘taken care of the arrangements’ for the loved and unloved of this little town for a very long time. I remembered James Jack from school, and even then he had known he’d be an undertaker one day. I always thought it weird to have a family business like that. I should have realised that this was the nature of this town, and I was soon to find out that we had a ‘family business’ as well. One that I could never have imagined. But now it was Granny’s turn to be ‘arranged’, and the pain in my heart and throat threatened to completely overwhelm me.
Yet even then, part of me felt removed from all of this as if I was watching it through water or some sort of emotional filter. I don’t think I had caught up with the other me who had taken the phone call, booked the train from London, talked to the Minister, the undertaker, the solicitor. Actually, thank God for them all, I thought, and thank God that Granny had already made the arrangements in advance. She had known that her time would come, and didn’t want to leave the burden to me. All I had to do was arrive, and I’d managed that.
Since that phone call last Wednesday morning to say that Granny had slipped away in her sleep, nothing was very clear. I had arranged time off work; the government department I worked for had been much more accommodating than I had expected. And as hard as it was to think about it, since I’d been dumped by Derek a month ago, I didn’t have to consider anyone else. The next thought crashing through, and the one I’d been holding back so that I didn’t sink further into self-pity, was that Granny’s death meant I didn’t have a single living relative in the whole world.
I couldn’t remember my grandfather. He had died before I was born. Old photos showed a kind and handsome face. My father had died when I was a baby, my mother when I was ten. Both of them had been only children. No brothers, sisters, cousins, aunties or uncles. I had never felt so alone, so completely and helplessly and frighteningly alone. It threatened to overwhelm me, so I bit it back, and pushed it deep within.
Even with that, though, something was bothering me about all this; some niggling doubt, a memory deep in my brain, some little idea that had been trying to work its way through my shock, my grief, my tears. Something didn’t feel right. Granny had been in perfect health. Even for a 75-year-old. And as far as I was aware, she had no intention of ‘passing on’, as she always insisted on calling death. Granny always said she was here for a reason, and by that she actually meant ‘here’. In this quiet little town, sitting in the very middle of Scotland. Or Alba, as Granny had always called it, the old name for Scotland meaning the land of the light.
I had no idea why this was all so important to her, but I knew that it was. I knew it went beyond patriotism, love of her country. It was love of the country, the land, every river, hill, blade of grass. She had a passion so great for everything to do with this land that she had never left it. Not once in all her years had she left this place. Every night she slept in the house she had been born in, not one night or day away from this town. I could never imagine what that must have been like. So many times I had tried to entice her to come down to London or take a holiday somewhere else. But she wouldn’t leave.
At that moment, standing on that windy hillside overlooking the town and countryside so loved by the woman we were now burying, I could hear her voice in my head. It gave some comfort in a way. As I breathed deeply and felt the tears falling onto my cheeks, I could remember the feel of her arms around my shoulders. It was as though she stood just behind me, and for a moment I was sure I could even smell her soapy smell.
What would she have said to me if she was here? I tried to concentrate on that; the feeling of her in my heart. I blocked out everything else, sounds, smells, the people all around me. I focused on my heart, and tried to slow down my breathing. I felt something different. Something softer, something beyond my pain. It was love, pure blessed love. She would have told me that everything happens for a reason, she would have said she loved me. With that thought, the tears flowed freely down my face, but I felt more peaceful. I had a sense that death wasn’t going to get in the way of how we felt about each other, and that helped me feel a little better.
I rubbed my tired eyes with my gloved fingers as cold splatters of rain – never far away in this part of the world – hit my head, and the grey sky darkened further and lowered down, settling almost onto our shoulders. I saw the concerned look on the faces of the other mourners. Old friends and neighbours, all elderly, and all looking very frail. Most rarely ventured out during the day, never mind after dark, and I was touched that they had come out for the burial.
With a quick nod from the Minister, we walked back down towards the road, past the old sandstone chapel to St Kentigern, roofless, windowless and leaning dangerously to one side. Past the old stone crypts and broken walls that had separated the very rich from the rest of the town, even in death.
Finally we reached the cars waiting to take us all to the local pub for some food. It wasn’t a far walk, but Granny had arranged transport with her elderly friends in mind.
I didn’t look back as we walked away from the grave. I didn’t see the council workers move in to fill in the earth around the coffin. I didn’t see the flowers and wreaths placed on top of the grave. And I didn’t see the wind hit and separate a bundle of bones, skin and feathers; all that remained of the beautiful songbird.
2
We arrived into the welcome heart of The Three Keys at the top of the Wellgate on the main road through town. It took a little time to help some of the ladies from the cars and show them into the lounge area, but it was everything anyone would want in a local pub. It had real log fires in the winter, sold all sorts of real ales, and real food was on the menu. It had been in the same family for years. I remembered a time of stolen kisses in the playground with Billy McGuire, and holding hands when no-one was looking. He knew he’d run the pub when he grew up. The town was that kind of place, continuity was important, and the big supermarkets were yet to find a way in to take over trade and close down businesses. The locals were continually raising petitions and the local newspaper regularly raised concerns, but most of the shops were still independently proud.
I was exhausted; none of the other mourners ate much and said very little. I had a feeling that Granny’s death had shocked them as much as it did me. We all had a hot drink, and there was lentil soup, sandwiches, sausage rolls, and scones with butter, double cream and jam – a traditional Scottish funeral fayre. The McGuires always catered for the town’s funerals and they had arranged the little wood-panelled lounge in tables set for four. Floral china milk and sugar bowls and small teapots with spouts that dribbled tea everywhere but into the cups.
Nothing warmed me up. Nothing could reach the ice block inside me, not even the kindness and warm wishes from Granny’s friends. None of the ladies drank alcohol, and as much as I could really have done with a
very large glass of wine I resisted. As soon as the last of the ladies had left, I thanked the waitresses and asked for the bill. An older-looking Billy from the boy I remembered came over to shake my hand, give his condolences, and tell me that they wouldn’t accept any money.
‘Kirsty,’ he said, ‘your granny was everyone’s granny in this town. She helped us all and there is no way I am taking a penny from you. I am so sorry that she has gone, it won’t be the same without her. Please take care of yourself, and if there’s anything you need just let me know. You’re not on your own, you know. We all feel the same.’
His thoughtfulness started fresh tears and I almost ran out of the bar after whispering my thanks. I wasn’t used to being so emotional; I rarely cried. I didn’t want to break down in front of him, but his kindness and obvious respect for Granny was overwhelming. I realised how much she had done for the people of the town, with her advice, lotions and potions. A fresh wave of loss overwhelmed me and I had to rush for the door. I wanted to feel cool air on my face and in my throat and lungs.
The pub was in one of the older parts of this very ancient town. It was said that there had been a pub on the site for over four hundred years. The thin higgledy pavements were so narrow that two people could not walk side by side without stepping onto the road. And the cobblestones, although quaint to tourists, meant walking in high heels was difficult.
I heard the church bells count out five o’clock, and it was already dark outside with the wet weather and the short daylight hours of late November. I pushed my way through the early Friday night drinkers who struggled to get in past the smokers filling the pavement outside, trying to avoid splashes from the buses and cars passing inches away on the shiny cobblestones.
Lost in painful thoughts, struggling to hold back tears, perhaps I wasn’t really paying attention to where I stepped, but I gasped as I felt a hand on my back pushing me hard. As I twisted round, I lost my balance. I saw dazzling headlights, heard brakes screeching, people shouting, and I felt myself falling into the blinding light. There was no way I could stop myself. I closed my eyes. My body tensed for the inevitable. Expecting pain. Blackness. Time slowed. Stopped. I saw Granny smiling at me. Arms out to reach me. I felt her love. I heard her say my name.