The Last Wanderer

by Meg Henderson

  In all other aspects Aeneas remained the same: a dapper little man standing just over five feet tall, with sandy hair and brown eyes. He was not handsome, but always clean and neat – that was a description everyone would give of Aeneas even long after he was dead, ‘neat’. But his daughter added a new dimension to his life. He probably had never thought himself capable of such overwhelming feelings, or prey to them, but for the rest of his life Margo would transcend everything else. There would be no rules for her except that she would get whatever she wanted, whatever she needed and whatever he could possibly provide for her, as long as he had her near. And that was a great pity, because more than anyone Ina had ever encountered, Margo needed a set of rules imposed with a firm hand.

  Ina could tell from the start that Margo wasn’t like other bairns. Probably she wouldn’t have spotted it so early or so clearly if she hadn’t experienced something like it before, but to Ina it was so obvious that she couldn’t understand why no one else commented on it. The child would look at you with Dolina Polson’s eyes. She would survey you in a detached way; she didn’t admit you into her life or ask to be admitted into yours. Not even her poor, besotted father overcame that, though his every breath was devoted to breaching the barrier without ever admitting that it was there. After all, to have done so would have been to bow to the possibility that his Margo was less than perfect.

  The ever-honest and practical Ina couldn’t help noticing every facet of the undeniably beautiful child she had brought into the world, though, and she saw that Margo didn’t behave like other bairns in so many ways. Even as a very small child, if she fell she didn’t cry and run to her mother, and if Ina ran to her she found herself shrugged off. To expose her emotions seemed to Margo like a weakness, a lack of dignity – she preferred to sort things out for herself. The only time she came near to another human being was when she wanted something – from Aeneas, usually, because she could always be sure he would give it, and even then the approach was carefully worked out in advance so that she didn’t get too close, it only looked that way. Aeneas loved being manipulated by his daughter, he loved being the doting father, but it seemed to Ina that Margo tailored the extent of daughterly affection exactly to get what she wanted. She was always in total control. She employed the same tactics with other people, but with Aeneas most of all, yet somehow she knew that they didn’t work with her mother, and as Margo couldn’t control the relationship between herself and Ina she had decided to keep her mother at a distance. Neither of them ever acknowledged this arrangement, though both understood it, and it was a source of great sadness to only one: Ina.

  7

  If anyone had felt close enough to Margo Hamilton to ask about her childhood, and if she had been the kind of person who discussed such things, she would have replied that she had spent it waiting. She had no idea what she was waiting for, but she felt that something was about to happen; something had to happen. Life couldn’t just be like this, she might have said. There had to be more than Acarsaid, something bigger; something different and better. All through her childhood and teenage years she had been confident that whatever she was waiting for would come to her, or else what was the point?

  Margo had always been aware that she was different from other people, even if she really thought that it was they that were different, not her. At school all the bairns were stupid, like everyone else in this tiny place: they were little people who spent their entire lives getting caught up in trivia, in things that didn’t matter, like small-talk and having pals. Margo had no close friends because she chose not to, though there were transient companions who were let go now and then when she had no further use for them or their friendship; she thought that was what friendships were about until those she had cast aside reacted as though she had hurt them. Not that she understood hurt, either; it was a word her mother used to describe the feelings of other bairns she had dropped. It was something they said about her, she knew, ‘That Margo Hamilton, she picks you and drops you again whenever she feels like it’, but she didn’t understand why this should hurt them, only that it did. She didn’t mean it, she would think coolly. It was as if she had been born with no innate understanding of the rules of human engagement, and had to learn them, one at a time. But she could rarely be bothered.

  The emotions of others left her feeling uncomfortable, and she was always keen to get away from them. She had quickly learned how to deal with her father, though. He was richer than other fathers, she worked that out when she was quite young, and he would give her whatever she desired, though she had to jump through several tiresome hoops to get it. In order to part him from whatever he had that she wanted, Margo had to deliver sweet words and smiles and often a hug or two: things that did not come naturally and made her shiver with discomfort at times. So she perfected an act that she would bring out and perform when necessary. She could see the disapproval in her mother’s eyes, but it didn’t matter as long as she got what she wanted. And pretty soon, too, she came to understand that Aeneas was regarded as an important man in Acarsaid, and that was something else she could use to her advantage. As far as she could work out, his position in the village was due to the fact that he was wealthy, and if you had money the rules were different: you could more or less do whatever you wanted. She was clever like that, she could see the bones of most situations pretty quickly and how to deal with them, and she noticed that she got away with things other bairns didn’t, simply because of who her father was, and that in turn was because he was rich. As she had never understood rules, this was a great help to Margo; as far as she was concerned, whatever rules were, they only applied to other people. Not that she set out to be difficult, it was just that she couldn’t see the boundaries of behaviour and so didn’t know when she had overstepped them.

  It was a situation that had worried Ina from the day her daughter had been born. She hadn’t been the kind that formed close friendships herself, but that hadn’t stopped her mixing in and getting on with other people. She thought back on her days at the herring, and how much she had enjoyed being with the other lassies, even if she was never one to exchange her deepest thoughts and secrets. Margo, though, was far more extreme than she had been. It wasn’t that Margo didn’t notice; it was that she didn’t care what other people got up to. Their lives held no interest for her except where they might touch on her own, and she took great care to ensure that that didn’t happen too often. Ina had some warmth, Margo had none; that was the worrying truth of it. Ina had become a mother long after she had accepted that she never would, accepted it calmly and without regret, too; but, now that she had, she felt the same concern as any woman did when she had a bairn. She wanted her daughter to be happy, to have good friends and a good life, and instead she had Margo, who existed without seeming to have any capacity for joy or excitement. What Ina had no way of knowing was that Margo was waiting. Ina tried to share her concerns with Aeneas, but what she saw as a problem he regarded as proof of his daughter’s perfection. Every time he went on business trips to Glasgow he returned with boxes full of clothes and shoes for Margo, all of them exquisite and expensive, and Ina thought that there had to be something not quite normal about any father knowing his daughter’s exact sizes. She looked at the taffeta and velvet dresses with their lace trims, and the dainty patent shoes – things other bairns would only wear for special occasions but Margo wore every day – and she asked him if perhaps he thought they were spoiling her. She meant ‘you’, but ‘we’ sounded less judgemental.

  ‘We’re only looking after her, Ina,’ Aeneas had chided her. ‘We have the money to do that properly, why would we make her wear rags?’

  ‘But Aeneas,’ Ina replied gently, ‘all these nice things make her stand out from the other bairns.’

  Aeneas beamed.

  ‘What I mean is,’ Ina persisted, ‘that other folk can’t afford these kinds of things and the bairns might get jealous and take it out on Margo.’

  ‘Tell me if they do,’ he said angri
ly. ‘No one will treat my Margo badly!’

  ‘No, no, Aeneas,’ Ina sighed, ‘you’re not understanding me. Look, it’s hard enough for her to make friends being how she is.’

  Aeneas stared at her in bewilderment.

  ‘She’s different, Aeneas,’ Ina tried again. ‘Margo doesn’t join in. Maybe that’s because we treat her as though she’s meant to be different.’

  Aeneas beamed with understanding. ‘Of course she’s different, and no shame in that. She’s better behaved,’ he smiled. ‘We’ve brought her up that way, Ina.’

  ‘But she thinks how she lives – all these fine clothes, all the toys and treats – is the way life should be,’ Ina said. ‘It wasn’t like that for me, or for you, Aeneas; we had to work to get where we are now. You don’t want her thinking it will always be like this, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ Aeneas boomed. ‘That’s why we worked so hard, to give our daughter nothing but the best.’

  Ina recalled that they hadn’t planned Margo, hadn’t wanted bairns, in fact, yet now Aeneas seemed convinced that all their planning had been for Margo from the start.

  ‘If we raise her knowing that she should have the best of everything, she won’t accept any less. She’ll make sure she always has the best, won’t she?’

  Ina nodded as though her doubts had been laid to rest, but though she had lost the argument, she knew she was right.

  When Margo was about seven years old, Ina had a phone call from Lerwick. It was her brother, Sandy, to tell her that Dolina was dying. Sandy had tracked Ina down, apparently, through Danny’s friend, Davie, and was phoning from the minister’s manse. All those years, she thought, when he could have done the same and hadn’t.

  ‘And has she asked to see me?’ Ina asked.

  ‘No,’ Sandy replied, embarrassed. ‘I just thought you might think the time was right. …’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘Even though my mother obviously doesn’t,’ Ina commented. ‘And Danny and Ella?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t told them,’ he said, ‘I thought they were too far away for it to make any difference.’

  True, Ina mused. ‘Well, thanks for letting me know, Sandy,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think I’ll be rushing over. I have responsibilities here and my man and bairn to take care of.’

  There was a pause. ‘It’s a pity,’ she said tartly, ‘that we don’t have another parent. Then we could be sure that we might talk to each other again someday. Goodbye.’

  Once off the phone, though, she began a conversation with herself. It had been no more than Sandy would’ve expected. Ina Polson had always been known to stand her ground, and she was still angry with him and the others that they had let Dolina control them, never once trying to contact the three outcasts until now, when Dolina was in no fit state to keep them in order, her order. Then something else took over that she would look back on through all the decades later: pride. She’d show them, she decided. She would go back to Lerwick, taking her daughter in all her finery. There was no possibility of Aeneas going, too, though he wavered when he realised Ina was determined to take his daughter away and nothing he could say would change her mind. The thought of being without his adored Margo for even a few days would leave him bereft, but Ina reminded him sharply that he often went off on business trips for a few days at a time and this would be no different.

  From Aberdeen they took the boat to Lerwick, a journey that seemed both familiar and strangely alien to Ina after all those years, and when they arrived at Lerwick she took her daughter not to any member of her family, but to the Grand Hotel. Dolina was dead, she learned, so all she could do was attend her mother’s funeral. It was winter, there was snow on the ground, but she was comfortable in her fur coat. Beside her stood her extraordinary child, dressed in blue pantaloons like jodhpurs, with little frills of material buttoned down over her shoes and held by a strip of elastic under the soles. Margo wore a matching coat with black fur collar, a black fur hat and, suspended around her neck on a cord, a blue muff trimmed with the same black fur at each end, to keep the Shetland cold from reaching her hands.

  In the kirk Ina and Margo sat at the back, staying well away from the rest of the family and mourners, well aware that their eyes were on her considerably more than their minds were on the event taking place, she and Margo were stealing Dolina’s thunder. They all looked much older than she had expected somehow, then she reminded herself that they had worked hard all their lives; that unlike her they had never reached a time when they could live well. At the end of the service she and Margo walked out last, after all the Polsons had left, to emphasise that they were not officially part of the funeral, and instead of heading for Cheyne Crescent they turned towards the Grand once again. Her brother, Sandy, approached her and said they would be pleased if she would join the rest of the family to await the return of the men after they had buried Dolina beside Angus and Magnus.

  Ina shook her head. ‘We’re booked on the next boat,’ she said, pulling on her fur-lined leather gloves. ‘I just came to pay my respects. She was my mother, after all,’ she said firmly.

  Sandy looked at Margo, who stared calmly back at him. ‘Everyone’s saying how like my mother your wee one is,’ he smiled. ‘She’s more like her than any of us – what a shame she never saw her.’ He knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing, and the look on his face showed clearly that he knew he couldn’t recall it.

  ‘And whose fault was that, if not her own?’ Ina asked coolly, and with that she took Margo’s hand and walked the short distance to the Grand to collect their luggage.

  When the boat left for Aberdeen again, Ina didn’t look back. That had been the last time she had been on Shetland; the last time she had ever seen or heard from the Lerwick branch of her family. What on earth had she been thinking, she wondered afterwards? Showing off in all her finery that she had a comfortable life, certainly, but why? Was she still trying to prove herself to her mother as she lay in her coffin? It made no sense, but it was the only explanation she could come up with. She had never been as good as Angus, never been clever as he would have been, but maybe she was trying to show Dolina that she’d turned out all right despite that. And there was the rest of the family to impress.

  The number of times in the years that followed that her mind had dissected that episode! She had tried to show them that, though they had all sided with Dolina and turned their backs on her, she had survived – more than survived, prospered; though she knew they would have seen it differently. They would have talked after she had gone of how she had used the occasion of her mother’s funeral to flaunt her wealth. She couldn’t blame them, because in a way that was what she had done. She had been angry with them because they had done as Dolina had said without thinking for themselves. They had cast her and Danny and Ella out without one voice being raised in opposition, not even Sandy’s. But she knew he felt bad about it, and another voice in her head would argue that she couldn’t judge them, she hadn’t had to live with Dolina day in, day out, so who was she to say how easy it would’ve been to stand up to her? Not that it mattered. These days when she argued with herself from her fireside chair, her warm prison, it was too late to go back and try to put it all right by explaining her side while they explained theirs, because they existed only in the wandering memory of an old woman. They were all gone; she had outlived them all.

  8

  It was hard to say if the geography of Acarsaid was a curse or a blessing. The village was, as the locals said themselves before anyone else could, a dead end, the last stop on the road map to the far northwest. To reach points further north you either had to hire a boat and go by sea, or travel back the way you had come, drive halfway across the country and approach them from other routes. Not that this was any great hardship, as the scenery was so eye-catching, even after the new road had straightened out most of the bends, swirls and blind corners. They were still there, of course, though as time passed only the oldest villagers – or those who had liv
ed there longest, which wasn’t quite the same thing – remembered using them.

  When Ina and Aeneas Hamilton arrived in the village in the late 1940s, the Brae, the steep hill that neatly dissected the village, was still the main road to and from the harbour. Ina had reason to remember it; being heavily pregnant for the first time at the age of forty, and having no car at that time, the only way to her home at the top of the Brae was to walk. The drivers of the fish lorries taking the catch to the cities in those days dreaded it almost as much as she had, and said that later generations of drivers taking the new road didn’t know how lucky they were. As the juices from the fish flesh and salt water – the bree – dripped from the lorries, and mixed with the melting ice, the steep road became treacherous. ‘A pig of a thing it was,’ the old drivers would tell the younger ones. ‘There was aye a race to get up first, because once the water and the bree was running down the Brae, anything trying to get up slid about like bairns sledging in the snow.’ Not, of course, that they saw much snow in Acarsaid, which was something of a sore point with generations of bairns: being so near to the sea and having a toe in Gulf Stream meant the snow melted as it landed – but you knew what they meant. In years gone by there had been some, so these same older villagers would insist, one or two mistakes by nature that had covered the whole area in snow two or three feet deep, but no self-respecting child ever believed them. One of the few things that made the Nicolson bairns feel special was that their grandmother, old Ina Hamilton, had regularly seen snow in her native Shetland. When their friends didn’t believe them, they would be escorted to the home they and their mother shared with Granny Ina, to hear it for themselves.

  ‘Every winter the snow was so deep that we couldn’t see over it,’ she would tell them.