The Laurence family always spent Christmas in London, but came back to Ealachan for New Year. Kirsty was walking past the iron gates of the house, when a big, black car headed up from the ferry. It drew to a halt and the window slid noiselessly down. Nicolas Laurence, looking very handsome, stuck his head out.
‘Hi there, Christine! Did you have a good Christmas?’
‘It’s nice to be back. Are your mum and dad here yet?’
‘They came over yesterday. I don’t see much of you in Edinburgh.’
‘No, well. It’s a big place.’
‘Are you coming to the party? Hogmanay. We’ve got people coming down from London and a few from Edinburgh as well. You will come, won’t you? Your grandfather and your mother too.’
‘Not sure you’ll ever prise my grandad out of the house on Hogmanay but mum might come. Is Annabel here?’
‘No. She’s in Paris. With a man, I think. You know what she’s like. Eight o’clock on New Year’s Eve,’ he called out of the window as the car pulled away. ‘Don’t bring anything but yourselves. There’ll be lots to eat.’
‘And lots to drink as well, if I know Nicolas,’ said Kirsty, when she told her mother about the invitation. ‘Will you come?’
‘I’d like to.’
‘Well do. You don’t have to stay cooped up here and I certainly want to go.’
‘Your Grandad won’t go, though, will he? He’d rather stay here with Finn.’
‘I never thought about that. No invitation for Finn.’
‘Why would there be?’
‘They’ve never been the best of friends. We used to catch him just watching us sometimes. Poor Nicolas. But we’d never let him join in any of our games.’
‘Which was very unkind of you, Kirsty.’
‘He wasn’t part of it, mum. We didn’t want him. We didn’t need anybody else. I know you’ve never liked Finn much, but he was a good friend to me.’
‘I liked that other lad, Francis. I just couldn’t see why you were so fond of Finn. I still can’t.’
‘We were like brother and sister. That’s what it always felt like.’
‘But he isn’t your brother. He’s an incomer. Oh Kirsty, I should have remarried, shouldn’t I?’
‘Don’t be daft. Who would you have married, mum?’
‘Well I suppose I might have found somebody!’ Isabel started to laugh.
‘But getting a brother for me wouldn’t have been a good enough reason to get married again.’
‘Maybe we should have moved to the mainland.’
‘Did you want to?’ Kirsty found herself slightly disturbed by the thought. ‘I mean later. When you got over losing my dad. Did you want to marry again?’
‘You never do get over losing somebody. You get through it, but not over it. It’s different for you, I know. You don’t remember him. But yes, if I’d met the right man, maybe I would have remarried’
‘I suppose you still could. You’re not old, mum.’
‘Maybe we could even have moved away. But your grandad would never have left Dunshee and I couldn’t just leave, could I? Besides, this was a good place to bring up a child. It was a good place for you!’
‘We were so free.’ Kirsty sighed at the memory. ‘We could do what we wanted, go where we liked. As long as we were together, it was alright. I felt safe. And it was like having a brother. A big brother, who would always look out for me.’
And yet, she thought, it had been as fragile as a cobweb. An outsider could have brought the whole thing crashing down round their ears in a moment. Back then, mentioning it to anybody else, even Nick, would have been like telling her dreams. It was the same with her work, with ideas for pictures. If she talked about them too much or to the wrong people, they just evaporated. Her friendship with Finn was a fragile arrangement. Not to be pinned down. And once destroyed, it would be as difficult to rebuild as a robin’s nest.
‘We’re off to a party at Ealachan on Hogmanay. Me and my mum.’
Kirsty made the announcement to the table in general. But Alasdair already knew, so really, it was for Finn’s benefit.
‘And I’m looking forward to it,’ added Isabel.
‘Do you want to go to a party with that crowd, Kirsty?’ asked Finn.
‘I don’t see why not!’ Isabel’s reply was quick and sharp.
Finn had stopped eating and set his knife and fork neatly on his plate, although he hadn’t quite finished his meal. ‘I notice he didn’t invite me.’
Alasdair let out a great guffaw of laughter.
‘That’ll be the day!’ he said. ‘That will be the bloody day!’
‘Alasdair!’ said Isabel.
‘Well, it will be the day!’
‘Why shouldn’t he invite Finn?’ asked Kirsty.
‘Because he wouldn’t go, would you, lad?’
‘I don’t know. I might.’
‘And because there’s all the difference in the world between being a tenant farmer and being a hired hand,’ said Isabel.
‘But you were a hired hand as well, mum.’
‘I worked for them. Nothing wrong with that. It was a pleasure to work for Malcolm Laurence. He’s a perfect gentleman! And so is his son.’
‘I’ll be off,’ Finn said, suddenly, pushing his chair noisily backwards over the stone floor. ‘I’ve things to do before dark.!’
Kirsty’s appetite had deserted her. She left most of her pudding, and excused herself from the table. She put on her coat and found Finn lurking in one of the outbuildings, pretending to polish a piece of old tack with an oily rag.
‘For God’s sake, Finn! Come inside. It’s freezing out here.’
‘You know I don’t give a damn about Nicolas. But mum wants to go. In fact, she needs to go. She doesn’t get much of a chance to get out of the house, and I’m going with her, whether you like it or not, and that’s that.’
‘You’ll be away back to Edinburgh soon.’
‘And that’s exactly why I want to make things nice for mum while I’m here.’
‘Do you not want to make things nice for me?’
‘I thought I did make things nice. Honestly, Finn, you don’t have to be jealous. It’ll be good for mum to go to the party and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t.’
‘Everything’s changed.’
‘Nothing’s changed. Well, not between you and me. But I can’t always be here, Finn, and I can’t always be worrying about your feelings.’ She rounded on him in sudden exasperation. ‘I could spend a lifetime trying to reassure you, couldn’t I? And it still wouldn’t be enough.’
Finn looked sheepish, kicking at the wall. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t help it but I’m sorry.’
‘Are you coming back in?’
‘Maybe later.’
‘Alright. Be like that.’
Kirsty hadn’t been inside Ealachan House very often although, once or twice, when they were children, Nicolas had invited her in for juice and biscuits. It had always seemed a gloomy place, and she had imagined Nicolas as a lonely little boy, trailing through its chilly rooms. There were two or three enormous reception rooms with fancy marble fireplaces, gilded mirrors and chandeliers. The staircase was an elegant sweep. There was a conservatory, a library lined from floor to ceiling with books and a panelled billiard room with a carved observation gallery above.
Some previous owner had planted shelter belts for the benefit of his garden. Now, the trees grew so thickly that, even in winter, once you were in the house or even on the lawns in front of the house, the sense of being on an island disappeared. Beautiful as the gardens were, Kirsty always found herself half suffocated by trees, and wanting to escape from them. To find the sea again, you had to go clambering up a path which traversed a steep bank behind one of the walled gardens. A breathless climb through dense vegetation brought you at last to the heathery spine of the island from where you could see the silhouettes of other islands, and breathe salty air again.
Kirsty and her
mother arrived late. Isabel had been fussing over her appearance, changing her dress, her shoes and her hairstyle until Kirsty grew impatient with her.
‘You look lovely!’ she said at last. ‘And if you don’t come now, I’m going without you!’
The other party guests had arrived from the mainland in a selection of sports cars and brightly painted Citroen 2CVs. Kirsty didn’t move in these circles in Edinburgh. None of her close friends even owned a car. The girls were tall and slender in Biba and Mary Quant. The young men were smartly tousled, in white shirts and dark trousers, and they all drank champagne as though it were going out of fashion, swallowed their final consonants, and narrowed their vowels so that it was hard to figure out exactly what they were saying.
Nicolas came up behind them. ‘Don’t you look wonderful, Christine?’
Kirsty was wearing a sea green Indian cotton dress, with a high waist and little bells that jingled as she walked. She was flattered by his obvious admiration. Finn had pretended not to notice anything different about her.
‘How the other half do live,’ she said, as she and Isabel stood outside the downstairs lavatory together, waiting their turn. ‘Mind you, they could do with a new loo.’ The lavatory, which she remembered from childhood visits, was a bleak room of immense and icy proportions with sheets of slippery toilet paper, a worn wooden seat, and a broken chain.
‘I used to clean this place,’ Isabel said, starting to laugh.
Kirsty danced with a succession of charming but not particularly handsome young men. Sometimes, in the intervals between dances, she would see her mother, standing with a glass of champagne in her hand, chatting to Malcolm. He didn’t dance, although his wife was visible from time to time, whirling through the Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow with a string of partners. Isabel seemed to be enjoying his company immensely. Occasionally, Nicolas would rescue Kirsty and dance with her himself. When the bells rang out at midnight, he was beside her. They embraced, briefly, and he gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. She noticed that her mother was beside Malcolm and – since his wife was nowhere to be seen – she too was the recipient of an embrace and a peck on the cheek.
In the early hours of the morning, with the party growing raucous, Nicolas offered to drive them back to the farm, but he had been drinking so much that they refused and set off to walk home by themselves. It was no more than a couple of miles but the ground was white with frost and by the time they were struggling up the last few hundred yards of the track to Dunshee, they were both exhausted. Kirsty had swathed herself in a woolly coat and tucked her dress up, so that she could walk more comfortably and she and her mother were going arm in arm, trying to keep to the grass at the side of the track to save their shoes.
Just before the farm gate, a tall figure uncoiled itself from a rock and barred their way.
‘Finn!’ Kirsty had been expecting this. ‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Waiting for you. I was worried about you. Down among the hooray Henries.’
‘You should have known we’d be alright.’
‘So Nicolas didn’t bring you home then?’
‘He offered, but we thought we’d be safer walking,’
‘Thank God for that.’
She took Finn’s arm and slipped her hand inside his pocket. On his other side, Isabel struggled under her own steam for a while, but at last she gave in to her fatigue and took his arm as well.
‘We’ve had a lovely time, haven’t we, mum?’
Isabel, a little drunk with champagne and the happiness of Malcolm’s attention, agreed. ‘It was a nice party.’
‘But our feet are killing us. I wish you hadn’t waited up though. You’ll be so tired in the morning.’ Kirsty looked up at him in the gloom. ‘We can sleep in but you can’t.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Honestly,’ she told him, lightly. ‘You’ll be better off when I’m back in Edinburgh.
‘Don’t say that!’
‘Well it’s true.’ She spoke in a low voice, not wanting her mother to hear. But Isabel was in a world of her own.
Kirsty leaned in close. ‘You’ll soon get back to normal again. I just seem to upset you.’
‘You don’t really believe that, do you? If I thought you really believed that…’
They were outside the front door. The house was in darkness. Alasdair had waited for the bells and then taken himself off to bed.
Isabel let go of Finn’s arm. ‘I’m dead on my feet. Make sure you put the lights off, Kirsty.’
Kirsty and Finn lingered in the doorway, their combined breath making patterns in the cold air. She reached up and kissed him quickly on the lips.
‘You’re drunk, Kirsty!’ He held her at arm’s length, embarrassed.
‘I think I must be! But do go to bed. Please. You know I worry about you.’
‘Happy New Year, Kirsty. Sleep well.’
‘You too, Finn! You too! And may all your dreams come true!’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the summer term of that first year at university, Kirsty discovered that she had a talent for finding and adapting long, vintage, velvet skirts, and Edwardian blouses and shawls that suited her looks. She would ferret about Edinburgh’s second hand shops, in search of bargains, long before it became fashionable to do so. She hadn’t realised that she looked Pre-Raphaelite until one of her tutors told her so, showing her pictures of Lizzie Siddal. After that, she used the pictures as inspiration for her own idiosyncratic style. She also wore beads and bells around her neck and jangly bangles. She drifted around in a cloud of patchouli. She was self consciously arty.
Every afternoon, Kirsty’s Director of Studies, Dr Sharansky, held court in his room. Though it was frowned upon by the authorities, he did not let this deter him. There was home-made beer and wine and only certain favoured individuals, Kirsty included, were invited to these gatherings. They would sit around his big table, which was littered with books and pictures and manuscripts of all kinds. There were always more men than women in the room, postgraduates, some of them, or junior lecturers. Sometimes there were foreign visitors: young poets and playwrights and artists.
One afternoon, Kirsty was perched among these smoky and self conscious young academics, like some bright bird, when the door was suddenly flung open and a man with long hair strode into the room. He was tall and slim and seemed to inhabit every inch of his body in a way that Kirsty had never seen before. Like her, he was revelling in his own persona, and she recognised a kindred spirit but one who was older and much more practiced.
‘Ash!’ said Sharansky, leaping to his feet, delighted with his new guest.
He turned around, beaming at the rest of them. ‘This, my friends, is Duncan Ashley. Otherwise known as Ash.’
He was a painter, exhibiting in the capital’s galleries, already making a name for himself. Kirsty had never heard of him, and never seen any of his work but Sharansky was clearly impressed by him. The conversation ebbed and flowed as she sat there, watching him, wondering why all the air seemed to have been sucked from the room. She fidgeted on the hard chair, struggling to breathe, aware of a flush rising from her neck to her cheeks.
Ash turned his gaze on her, raising his eyebrows.
Dr Sharansky hurried to introduce her. ‘Ash, this is Kirsty Galbreath.’
‘Pleased to meet you!’ he leaned over and shook her hand. His own hands were strong and freckled. She found herself smiling inanely at him, tongue tied for once.
‘Are you another fine artist then?’ he asked, with a hint of sarcasm and a malicious glance at Sharansky.
‘Sort of.’
‘Our Kirsty has real talent!’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He smiled, distant, unattainable, more physically attractive than anyone she had ever met.
He stayed for an hour, drank several glasses of wine in quick succession, then got to his feet and – without so much as a stumble – said ‘goodbye all!’ and left. As he went, passing her
chair, he ran his hand across her back, a mere touch. She didn’t know whether it was deliberate or accidental but her body’s instant response surprised him. Again, the air left the room, and she found herself stranded, a fish out of water. Later, walking home through the hop-scented Edinburgh evening, she thought, I’ll probably never see him again, but she was rather sorry about that.
In their second year, Kirsty elected to share a top floor flat in the New Town with her friends, Molly and Anne. It was spartan and poorly furnished, it was chilly, even in summer, but it was theirs and they loved it. Much to Finn’s disappointment, Kirsty spent only a couple of weeks on the island that summer, and he was too busy about the farm to have much time with her. Then she went back to Edinburgh where Molly, with a couple of resits, was studying madly. That first morning in their new flat, Kirsty walked up to Henderson’s for wholemeal bread, through the New Town streets that smelled faintly of Gauloises. When they sat down to eat their warm bread and jam at the heavy utility table in the living room window, she had a sudden intimation of pure happiness. Anything could happen and all of it seemed exciting.
That same day, she started a part-time job in a tiny art gallery on Rose Street. Dr Sharansky had ‘put in a word’ for her. For a few hours each week, Kirsty would sit behind a desk, fielding enquiries about the pictures. During the whole time she worked there, nobody ever bought anything from her, although a handful of sales were made at the private views that opened each exhibition.
One Saturday, in late summer, with the city in its usual Festival turmoil, she found that the new exhibition consisted of a series of huge canvases, near-pornographic paintings, in thick layers of muted oils, depicting naked women and muscular (although fully clothed) men in attitudes of extraordinary violence. All the canvases were scrawled with the name ‘Ash’ in large black letters. Kirsty saw him at the private view but he was surrounded by adoring acolytes and she couldn’t get near. Later that week, however, he came into the gallery.
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