‘Well,’ said Chrissie resignedly, ‘I can see you’re determined to be melancholy. Carry on.’
He looked at his son. ‘I used to come into harbour and see you all waiting there for me,’ he said. ‘All those wee faces watching and lighting up when they saw me. To tell the truth, lad, I felt guilty every time; yet I still went back. I knew I was missing so much, but so were you, and you hadn’t a choice.’
‘Can somebody tell me what good all this pathetic soul-searching is doing?’ Chrissie demanded in exasperation. ‘You were a rotten husband and a worse father – will that do you? Does that make you feel better, you bloody old play-actor?’
‘I’m just saying I wish I’d seen more of my bairns,’ Sorley Mor protested. ‘Can a man not say that sitting by his own fireside without this hard woman butting in?’
‘You are not,’ his wife said. ‘You’re trying to show us all what a sensitive, caring kind of a bugger you are. But we’re not buying it, I’ll tell you that, so you might as well button it!’
‘Never mind, father,’ Sorley Og laughed. ‘At least you’ll know all your grandbairns.’
Sorley Mor looked from his son to Rose. ‘You mean … ?’
‘No, not yet,’ Rose laughed. ‘But it’s part of the plan, don’t worry!’
‘Young Pete told me the other day that his Alison is expecting,’ said Sorley Mor, ‘and they only got married six months ago. Here’s you two been married a year and those two have beaten you to it. We can’t have the fair name of MacEwan running out, now.’
‘Aye, like your family is the only MacEwan that counts,’ scoffed his wife. ‘The village is polluted with them.’
‘They’re not all of the true, noble bloodline, woman,’ said Sorley Mor grandly. ‘They are sub-strains. We are the only true MacEwans, as well you know.’
‘There are times I think he believes the nonsense he comes out with,’ said Chrissie. ‘That’s how daft the man is.’
‘Aye, Pete was fair excited,’ said Sorley Og. ‘Smiled the whole trip after he got the news. You’d have thought it was the first baby ever to be born.’
‘Funny when you think of him running around all those years, sowing wild oats and trying to avoid them taking root,’ Gannet laughed.
‘Aye, well, you’ve all been in that position, I’m sure,’ said Chrissie, ‘but we don’t want any details here, thank you.’ She turned to her daughter-in-law. ‘I only hope you do better than I did, Rose,’ Chrissie said. ‘I hope when it’s your turn you have the sense to have a son first.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’ her husband demanded.
‘Don’t be like me, that’s my advice,’ Chrissie said, ignoring Sorley Mor. ‘A bairn a year till I finally managed the son and heir.’
‘That is a damnable lie!’ Sorley Mor exclaimed.
‘No it’s not, you’re the liar!’
‘We wanted all our bairns. Three fine daughters I gave you, Chrissie MacEwan, and then a son.’
‘Ach, come off it,’ Chrissie retorted. ‘If Sorley Og had arrived first, we’d probably have stopped there, and you know it.’
‘Are you suggesting that I don’t love my daughters?’
‘I’m saying you wanted a son more than anything, you old fraud, and I’d have been kept barefoot and pregnant for however many years it took to give you one. Is it any wonder our lassies took off for the far corners of the earth instead of staying here, when they knew they were only the warm-ups for the main turn – another Sorley?’
‘Well,’ said Sorley Mor in a shocked voice. ‘We have obviously been at cross-purposes all our married life, that’s all I can say.’
‘I wish it was!’ said Chrissie.
‘Did you ever hear the likes of it, Gannet?’
Gannet smiled lazily and said nothing.
‘It was always my impression that we had four bairns because we wanted four bairns, Chrissie MacEwan. Now I find out that you’ve been harbouring this resentment all these years.’
‘And if Sorley Og had been another daughter?’
Sorley Mor cleared his throat. ‘Then I would’ve loved her every bit as much as the others,’ he said unconvincingly.
‘And you would’ve stopped there? You wouldn’t have wanted to keep trying for a son?’
‘Well, we have no way of knowing that, do we?’ Sorley Mor said, trying to sound as though he had given the matter some real thought as Chrissie laughed at him. ‘I mean, had we been in that position we might have looked again at the situation, but there again, maybe we wouldn’t have. How will we ever know? It is one of life’s great imponderables, Chrissie MacEwan, and that’s the way it will have to stay.’
‘Bullshit!’ said Chrissie. ‘I know perfectly well, Sorley Mor, and so do you. Rose – have a son first time round, that’s my advice.’
As the young couple left, Sorley Mor, Chrissie and Gannet saw them to the door. It was the kind of bright, crisp evening when winter fades into spring, the boats in the harbour below moving gently in the swell. Rose and Chrissie were talking quietly to one side as the men talked about boats.
‘What do you think the lads will do?’ Sorley Mor asked, not altogether expecting an answer. ‘I wonder how they’ll take it?’
‘Well, Stamp is ages with us, Skipper,’ Gannet said. ‘I’d imagine he’ll either retire as well, or help Dan to make some edible food.’
‘Aye, that’s a thought.’
‘And God alone knows what Eric might turn his hand to,’ Sorley Mor said, as the others laughed in response.
‘He’s been talking about starting his own dancing school,’ Sorley Og said. ‘He and Marilyn are getting a bit fed up with criss-crossing the world for competitions. And, as he says himself, they’re not as supple as they used to be.’
‘Well at least we’ve kept that secret all these years.’
‘Do you think we have, Skipper?’ Gannet asked, smiling.
‘Of course we have! I made up my mind early on that if anyone asked me outright I’d deny it completely, threaten to let the big man loose on them for saying such scandalous things about him. Luckily none of them ever did, though I must admit that once or twice I wondered if one or two of them might have been hinting. But Stamp was right, all those years ago; it was nothing but a fig-leaf. Oh yes, we did a fine job, there, all right. Not the snifter of a suspicion among them!’
At that a silent, amused look passed between Gannet and Sorley Og.
‘Pete won’t have trouble finding another job,’ Sorley Og said. ‘He’s a good worker and a decent lad, they’ll be queuing up to get him. Stevie, too: no engineer is ever out of work long. And the relief crew, they’re all good men.’
‘Aye, that’s true,’ said Sorley Mor, his hands deep in his pockets, all eyes fixed on the gleaming green-and-white boat that dwarfed all the others. ‘So she’ll be the last Wanderer then?’
‘Aye, father,’ his son said sadly.
‘So be it, then,’ he said brightly. ‘Goodnight all.’
Chrissie reached out and hugged Rose. ‘Thank God,’ she whispered. ‘Thank God. Now we’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that they’re safe.’
Rose looked at her. ‘You too?’
‘All of us, Rose, all of us,’ Chrissie replied quietly. ‘And that fool of a man as well. Every time Sorley Og goes to sea without him he paces about, watching the sky, tapping the barometer, listening to every forecast. Now he knows what it’s been like all these years.’ Then she looked at Gannet and Sorley Mor. ‘Look at us,’ she said, pushing them towards the house in front of her. ‘It’s been like this not only all my married life, but before it, too. I used to believe the best man went back to his own house after the wedding, not that he joined the happy couple. And baby makes three! Get inside the pair of you!’
As they walked the short distance home to MacEwan’s Castle, Rose linked her arm through Sorley Og’s. ‘That was kind of you,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Letting him off the hook. You could’ve agreed with him when
he said he knew he’d been selfish staying at sea because he liked the life.’
‘And what good would that have done?’ Sorley Og asked gently.
‘None at all, but there’s many wouldn’t have understood that.’ She stood on tiptoe to deliver a kiss to his cheek. ‘You’re a good man, Sorley Og.’
‘So is he,’ he smiled. ‘So is he.’
Before they went into their own home, Sorley Og stopped again and looked down at the harbour. ‘It’s funny to think of her as the last Wanderer,’ he said softly, ‘of any boat being the last Wanderer, come to that.’
‘Well,’ Rose said, ‘at least that model you’ve been building all these years might finally get finished!’
Sorley glanced at the cairn she had been building this last year. ‘Aye, and maybe you’ll stop putting stones on that thing,’ he replied.
‘You know!’ Rose said accusingly, slapping him on the shoulder.
‘Of course I know. I’m a MacEwan, I know everything, woman!’ he laughed, mimicking his father, then he swept her up in a bear-hug. ‘We’re going to have a good life, Rose,’ he said contentedly. ‘We could go on holiday. I mean a real holiday, not a week here or there.’
‘Well, we’ll have to choose carefully,’ Rose said, looking up at him, her expression mock serious. ‘You won’t go on a boat and you’re scared of flying. Now what does that leave us?’
‘Tell the truth, Rose MacEwan.’ Sorley Og laughed self-consciously. ‘I won’t go across the English Channel, and you know my perfectly valid reasons for that.’
‘And you’re not scared of flying, then?’
‘Well, I don’t understand how planes stay up there. It’s a technological doubt rather than a fear,’ he said defensively, then he laughed. ‘It’s a man’s thing; you wouldn’t understand. Women don’t have the brains to think about things like that. It’s not a fear as such.’
‘Liar!’ Rose accused him, and he pulled a face at her.
‘To be serious for a moment, Mrs MacEwan,’ he said pompously and she giggled. ‘I’d like to go some place where there’s lots of snow. I’ve never seen really heavy snow. Do you remember when we were kids and Dougie used to take us to your house to hear your grandmother’s stories about the snow? Well, I never believed her.’
Rose pushed him playfully. ‘Are you saying Granny Ina is a liar?’ she demanded.
Sorley Og laughed. ‘None of us ever believed her – didn’t you know that? We just thought she was a mad old Shetlander, but her fairy stories were still worth hearing!’
‘You swine!
Sorley Og laughed. ‘And who knows,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘maybe your family will approve of me once I’m not a fisherman any more. I always liked your brother Dougie, you know, but I’ve never felt at ease with him since the day we told them we were getting married. Even when we’re talking business, when we’re haggling over prices for our catch, there’s this barrier where there wasn’t before.’
Rose felt tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. He had made her happy, yet her family still disapproved and he was still affected by that.
‘I feel like I’ve lost a friend,’ Sorley Og said sadly. ‘I miss Dougie.’
‘Well,’ she said, her voice too high with false brightness, ‘you gained a wife!’
‘Mmm,’ said her husband, ‘and I’m still not sure I got the best out of the deal …’
She tried to pull away from him but he pulled her still closer. ‘Maybe after we get out of the business I’ll have both,’ he said into her hair.
She was on the point of telling him what Chrissie had said about his father worrying about him, as he had once worried about Sorley Mor, but just then a voice rose from the house behind them, singing ‘The Silver Darlings’ in a pure, beautiful tone. They looked in the direction of the singing and laughed. Chrissie hadn’t been entirely right about Sorley Mor, but she had been spot on about ‘baby’. Gannet did indeed still have a bit in him.
17
Whenever Margo Nicolson thought about her son-in-law she simmered with dislike and resentment. Not only was he another unwelcome in-law who had stolen one of her chicks from the nest, but he had stolen Rose, in whom so many family hopes had been invested. Worse still, unlike the others who never openly challenged her, she had the feeling that he was forever mocking her. Though she couldn’t quite put her finger on anything specific, the suspicion spiced their encounters.
‘He thinks he knows everything that one,’ Margo would shout to her mother, ‘but he understands nothing, does he?’
Granny Ina would smile and nod, and turn off her hearing aid, the better not to hear her with, though she was aware that she was hearing less these days and what she did hear didn’t always make much sense. They all talked such nonsense, the lot of them, thinking they were the first to say whatever it was, and she’d worked out long ago that they were quite happy as long as she smiled and nodded when they bellowed at her. Her daughter would say to the others, ‘I think the batteries are going, but she’s happy enough thinking her own thoughts,’ and she’d smile patronisingly. In all the years Granny Ina had been staying out of family conflict in this way, Margo had never noticed, so if anyone knew nothing, the prime candidate was Margo herself. But Granny Ina felt guilty about Margo. Even given her early widowhood, Ina had always felt her daughter’s bitterness must also somehow be her fault – partly, at least; she was her mother, after all, and guilt about bairns is and always will be a mother’s lot. Though she couldn’t quite understand what she’d done to produce this determinedly unhappy woman, or how she could’ve evolved from the girl she had been.
After Quintin’s death, followed by Aeneas’s, Margo and the bairns had moved in with Granny Ina. Having been widowed herself so recently, Ina was glad of the company, and of the feeling of being of use again by helping her daughter care for her family. Aeneas had left a little money, but things were tight until the ground the smokery stood on was finally sold. The business itself was worth nothing; the business itself did not exist. There were always rumours about what the owner would do with it, that he would demolish what was there and build a factory or a garage, but nothing happened to the little group of buildings and sheds that had been Aeneas’s pride and joy, except that they grew more derelict over the years. Eventually what Aeneas had built was spruced up and the old smokery had become a museum, not that it mattered to Ina.
Once she and her family had moved in with her mother, Margo took odd jobs about the village. Thanks to Aeneas’s efforts she was qualified for very little that would bring her a living. A smattering of knowledge about how to keep books was all she had to offer apart from the housewifery she had learned while being a wife and mother. She decided that if she had to be a cleaner she would do it when there was no one about so that she didn’t have to be engaged in conversation; she had never been good at conversation, it bored her. So she cleaned the school when the bairns and staff had gone home, and the surgery after hours, times and places where she didn’t come in to contact with people. The bairns did what they could until they were old enough to look for adult jobs. They managed, but once they were all under the same roof Granny Ina could see at first hand how little love and affection her daughter gave the bairns. Margo looked after their physical needs, their clothes were always washed and pressed, food was always on the table on time, but in other ways – the ways Ina thought counted more – she was as distant a mother as she had been a daughter.
At first Ina expected this to be an understandable but passing effect of the shock of losing her husband, but if anything Margo’s attitude became more entrenched as time went on. There was little laughter and no joy that Ina could see, no real bond between mother and bairns, and she saw them trying to get close to her in little ways that provoked vivid memories of her own relationship, or lack of it, with Dolina. It had been her father, Magnus, who had brought laughter and affection, she remembered, realising that the older she got the more she missed him
, but the Nicolson family had no one like that; it was a wonder the bairns had all turned out as well as they did. The death of a decent man like Quintin had been a tragedy, to be sure, but the lives of every fishing family were marked by the loss of menfolk, and most women managed to get on with their lives. Although they never forgot, they moved on, however reluctantly, whereas Margo seemed to hold the entire human race responsible for her misery. But then, as Ina was the first to admit, she had never fully understood her daughter and could only guess at what was going on in her mind.
From Margo’s standpoint it was different, of course. She was seething with resentment, angry at Quintin for not dying sooner, before she had produced these bairns. When he had been killed it was Ina who got the phone call. It was thought that it would be easier on Margo if her mother broke the news. Margo knew that at the time and it had made her smile wryly; given that her reactions had always shocked people, her reaction to Quintin’s death would have blown them off their feet. She had been ironing clothes when Ina came in and made her sit down. She remembered watching the scene from the outside, and knew that this was the conventional way bad news was handled. She had wanted to say, ‘Look, whatever it is, just tell me,’ but knew she had to go through the motions, even if she didn’t understand them.
‘It’s Quintin,’ Ina said quietly.
‘What is?’ Margo asked blankly.
‘There’s been an accident at sea,’ Ina explained. ‘I’m sorry, lass, but he’s been killed.’
Her first thought was to ask if Ina was sure, not because she wanted it otherwise, but just that, to be sure. Then she felt deep relief. Her whole body sagged with it, then she wanted to jump up and down and shout with joy. He wouldn’t be coming back; she was free; it was over. Then she thought of the bairns and felt anger because he had died too late for her to be free. Even if he had gone three or four months ago, she wouldn’t have this one in her belly. To everyone viewing the scene from the outside she was going through the stages any widow would be expected to go through, especially a young one with tiny bairns, only Margo knew it had nothing to do with that.
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