‘Don’t mind Frisky,’ the woman said. ‘He won’t touch you, so.’ She was comfortably fat and her clothes were too tight for her. Her chest was like two dumplings, spilling out over the top of her sweater. When she hugged him, he could smell a faint scent of coal tar soap. Her name was Phyllis, and she was his mother’s friend, but he couldn’t say her name. He called her Phissie. She didn’t seem to mind. She gave him tea with lots of milk and sugar, the way he liked it, baby tea she called it, which made him feel cross because he wasn’t a baby. And then she took a big piece of corned beef out of a pan, real beef, which she had cooked herself, all pink and juicy and sweet smelling, and she cut generous slices off it and put it between two thick slices of white bread and butter, and set it in front of him. The heat of the meat was making the butter melt and soak into the bread.
‘Eat up, Finny,’ said his mother. ‘Phyllis makes the best corned beef sandwiches in all Ireland, if not the whole world.’
‘Will he have mustard?’ asked Phyllis.
‘I don’t know.’
She put a little mustard on the tip of her knife and let him lick it, but he didn’t like the taste of it. It nipped his tongue. So he shook his head. ‘No thank-you, Phissie!’ He took a mouthful of his sandwich to take away the sting of the mustard. And when he finished that, she made him another one. And he finished that too, licking the crumbs off the plate.
‘I wouldn’t like to have the feeding of him.’ said Phyllis.
The luscious taste and the scent of the beef had lodged itself in his mind. Finny. He had forgotten that his mother called him Finny. The woman in the convent hadn’t called him Finny. He had been Finn, there. Just one more thing to disturb him. He had not been back to see her again, although she wrote to him, from time to time and he sent her the odd letter or postcard in return. It was easier to put things on paper than to have to deal with her at first hand. At Christmas, he sent her parcels of useful things: toiletries, sweets, books. Sometimes, when there was a woman in his life, he would delegate the task to her. But he never kept his girlfriends for very long. They got tired of him and went away. ‘You’ll go to any lengths to avoid commitment!’ the last one had said, flinging clothes into her suitcase. She had infiltrated her clothes into his house over the few months they had been lovers. But he had never invited her to move in with him, never given her any reason to suppose that the arrangement was other than casual and temporary. Why did women always expect more? He had nothing to give. Nothing whatsoever. He took what he needed and gave nothing in return. They always thought they would change him, but they never did.
In his hotel room, he showered, dressed and went out into the city for a while, but there was almost nothing that he remembered until he walked down to Bewleys, where the smell of coffee and baking, where the sight of the stained glass windows, bright jewels in the wintry street, brought his mother vividly into his mind again. He ought to go and visit her. Her letters were short and neat. She didn’t have much to say to him. God bless you, she wrote at the end of each note. God bless you, Finn. Who was he to turn down blessings? He went into a bar, drank a couple of whiskeys, ate a bland lasagne and went back to his hotel, where he slept fitfully, his dreams full of uneasy fragments of the past.
In the morning, he consulted his road map, and drove out of the city. It took him a long time to find the place, and his chief impression was of its deliberate remoteness. He understood why it had been almost impossible to escape from it. Why the older boys, who had tried, had invariably been brought back by the Gardai. At first, he drove through monotonous agricultural land, past farms, new bungalows, affluent churches, villages set among fields and hedges, quiet streets with pubs, shops, signposts to the occasional tourist attraction, usually some prehistoric site or other . Sometimes a stately home, Or the remains of one. But gradually this civilised countryside gave place to something fiercer, more hostile, especially now, in winter.
He was in a wilderness of peat bogs with the wind blowing unhindered across them. He stopped, consulted his road map, drove on towards a line of low hills. A narrow road, with grass sprouting down the middle, wound along a valley. He could feel it swishing beneath the car. Stunted thorns fringed the road. He had not passed another car for the last half hour. It was mid-afternoon, already. The sky was a uniform grey. At last, he found what he was looking for: the entrance to a driveway, twin stone pillars almost hidden from view by ivy and a dense blackthorn hedge. Sloes. They had gathered sloes where they could find them, and tried to eat them to satisfy their extreme hunger, but the fruits were bitter and had made them sick. If he had not had a map, he would never have recognised the place. His comings and goings had been infrequent. Once you were there, there you stayed.
He turned right and drove slowly along the uneven track, seeing almost nothing he remembered. But then, rounding a bend, he came upon what had once been the Brothers’ garden, its wall crumbling so that the inside was laid bare, a jumble of shrub, and bushes and ancient fruit trees. Nature had done its work all too well, and the once green lawns had been obliterated by a tangled mass of vegetation. Even now, in winter, it would be difficult to fight your way in. He was almost cheered by the sight of so much disorder where once there had been perfection and plenty. He drove on.
Around the next bend, he saw the house and his foot found the brake. It was in a state of advanced dilapidation which gave it the look of some mediaeval ruin, although there was no great age to the building. It was a late Victorian edifice, perhaps one of those country houses built as a status symbol with new money and then adapted haphazardly over the years to suit its changing purpose. Neglect and abandonment had given it a sinister beauty. The roofs had been stripped, deliberately, it seemed. The windows were broken, perhaps by wind and weather, perhaps by country children, throwing stones. But who would venture out so far just to vandalise this place? Well, perhaps there were some who would, he thought. There was a crucifix perched on one of the gable ends. It looked pathetic. An anomaly.
He drove on for a couple of hundred yards, parked his car some distance away from the house and got out. His hand was shaking when he tried to put the keys in his coat pocket. His feet sank into mud as he walked towards the building, found a door swinging loose on its hinges, pushed it open and went inside. His heart was in his mouth. What did he expect? Demons, lurking in corners, waiting to snatch at him from the shadows? For sure, the place was disturbing. Terrifying even. The rooms were leprous with damp, paper shredded off the walls like peeling skin, the floors deep in bird droppings, plaster fragments, all of it stinking of mildew. The very air of the place seemed sickly, heavy with decay but after all, there were no cries, no shouts, not so much as a whisper. Nothing human. And it was human beings who had rendered this place truly terrifying. The stairs were perilous and he did not attempt them. He just stood at the bottom, his hand on the banister rail, peering up towards the faint grey light of the upper floors. But instead of demons, Francis came walking into his mind. Sweet Francis. He could almost hear him singing, the notes dipping and soaring like birdsong.
The winter it is past, and the summer’s come at last, and the little birds they sing in the trees...
What had really happened to him? Had it been an accident? Over the years he had come to understand that memory could not be trusted. You told yourself stories, in an effort to impose shape and meaning on the chaos of your life. And then somehow, those stories began to seem like true accounts. He had not seen what had happened to Francis, but he had heard and he could imagine. In one scenario, he saw Francis, blinded by his own desperation, climbing onto the polished wooden rail, and jumping off. In Francis’ shoes, he could just about imagine that he might have done it. But there was a much more disturbing image that came to him from time to time, like a flashback to something seen, although he knew fine he had been in bed with the thin sheet pulled over his head, because that was what they always did on these nights. And he had seen nothing. Not with his own two eyes. Nevertheless, he cou
ld see it. Could see Francis, poor skinny Francis, vulnerable as a puppy, and quite as unable to defend himself. Francis, who was due to leave the school any day now, on the point of escaping for good. Francis, his thin frame bent over the banister and then, savagely, tipped head first into the darkness below.
A sudden flurry of sound and movement from above made him jump, but it was only panic stricken pigeons, flapping away, indignant at his intrusion. The house was wasting away and would never be resuscitated now. Who would want to? It was haunted by the memory of the evil it had once contained. You wouldn’t want to live here. Wouldn’t want to spend more time than you had to. There were no ghosts here. No demons. It was just a building, a shrivelled shell and like the misery it had once contained, there was a kind of banality in it. It was a sad, bad old place. But the only ghosts were in his head.
He went out again, breathing in the chilly air with relief, clearing his lungs, leaving the door to swing open behind him. He wished somebody would come along and finish the job. Burn the place down to the ground. When he got to his car, he turned and looked back at the house. Behind the ruined building was a long, low ridge, covered in trees. It had begun to rain, heavily. But the sun, emerging from a bank of dark clouds as it sank towards the western horizon, was turning the whole sky a livid shade of ochre. A strange and wonderful sound, growing in volume, distracted him. He saw a great mass of rooks, hundreds, perhaps thousands of birds, filling the yellow sky, tumbling like so many flakes of ash from some massive conflagration, soaring above and falling towards the trees behind the house. The sight and the sound – bizarre, but wholly natural – raised his spirits. He felt his heart give a little leap of pleasure. Who would have thought it, in such a place? He remembered another time, another place. Watching the rooks fly back to Ealachan. The warmth. The weight of the greenheart rod. Alasdair teaching him to cast. Kirsty, watching. His sister. No. His lover. Tick tock, he thought. Tick tock.
Time passed. He didn’t know how long, but when he came to himself, he saw that darkness had fallen. He got into his car and drove away without a backward glance. Another night and then he would go back to Scotland and get on with the rest of his life.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Dunshee was on the market. Eighteen months had passed since Kirsty had had that one tantalising glimpse of Finn. Two oil rig disasters – Finn’s and Piper Alpha - in as many years, had affected the Laurence family business badly. The firm, which dealt in safety equipment of all kinds, had been forced to pay out a share of the compensation. Their standards had been criticised. Nicolas muttered about commercial pressures but they would have to sell off some property if they were to survive. Malcolm Laurence declared that he would sell Ealachan over his dead body but some of the farms would have to go. When a tiny bungalow – quite suitable as a retirement cottage - fell vacant in the village, Nicolas felt that the time had come to move Alasdair and sell Dunshee. What with the views and the beach, it should fetch a tidy sum. Somebody would surely pay handsomely for an island retreat.
‘You do realise it will kill him, don’t you?’ said Kirsty, wildly.
‘Don’t be so melodramatic. I’ll even renovate the bungalow for him. You can chose the colour scheme if you like. He’s too old to be doing farm work and we can’t afford to subsidise him any longer.’
People had been coming to look at the farm, but only intermittently. One man arrived by helicopter. He said he was considering it as a meditation centre but found it much too isolated. He didn’t appear to notice the irony of this. Many of the potential buyers were in search of a Hebridean holiday home. They were all looking for peace and quiet. All of them found Dunshee too remote for their urban tastes.
‘It isn’t quite what we thought it would be,’ they said, even when they saw it green and bonny in summer. God knows what they would make of it in winter.
Kirsty insisted on being there to show people around. Her grandfather would be living there until the place was sold and entry dates agreed. The bungalow was being renovated and decorated. No expense would be spared.
‘And why not?’ said Kirsty to her husband. ‘It’ll still be your property. When he dies, you’ll have one more holiday home to rent out.’
‘Which won’t be for a very long time, I hope,’ said Nicolas evenly. She believed him, but it didn’t make the proposed move any easier. Her grandfather seemed to have shrunk in the past few months. He walked through the house with her, stroking his furniture, the old dresser, the brass bedstead that he had slept on all his married life but which would be much too big for his bedroom in the bungalow.
‘What will I do with all my things?’ he asked, querulously. ‘And what about your mother’s ornaments?’
She knew that they should already be sorting and packing, but she couldn’t bring herself to begin. It would be better to do everything in a hurry at the last minute. That way it wouldn’t be too painful for either of them.
Her own bedroom was the hardest to bear. She showed people round and had to listen to them calling her bed ‘quaint’ and ‘sweet’ and ‘primitive.’ Some planned to keep it just as it was. Some mused that they could turn it into a big cupboard because ‘who could possibly sleep in there?’
‘I did,’ she said, and the woman turned to look at her as though she was some strange outlandish creature.
‘You did?’
‘Yes. This was my bedroom. I used to sleep in here when I was a child. And as an adult as well. It was very comfortable in winter. Very warm.’
You can even make love in it, she thought.
Deep misery had spawned a sort of boredom in her. She couldn’t bear to listen to these people, never mind enthuse about their plans for her old home. One or two of them even went to survey but nobody made an offer, and Nicolas’s visions of a closing date with eager bidders came to nothing. Perhaps the price was just too high. Then, in August, Nicholas’s saviour arrived, in the shape of a smart young man, driving a red E-Type Jaguar off the ferry. He had made an appointment to view. His name was John Grainger and he called in at Ealachan and drove up to Dunshee with Kirsty beside him. He was a very charming young man and made polite conversation all the way up the track, although the wear and tear on his vehicle must have been colossal and she could see him wincing, every time they negotiated a particularly deep rut.
At the farm, he got out of the car and pulled a brand new Barbour jacket over his suit, although it was a warm day.
‘‘Yes, yes, I see,’ he said all the time. When she asked him if he wanted to go down to the beach, he glanced at his shoes, shuddered and shook his head firmly. ‘No. That won’t be necessary, thank-you very much.’
He had brought a plan of the land and checked it over with her, against an ordnance survey map, which he produced from one of the Barbour pockets.
‘There could be more land available for rent, if need be. But I don’t think whoever buys it will want to farm it. Do you, Mr Grainger?’
He ignored the question and traced the contours of the hill at the back of the house with his fingertip. ‘So from here, behind the house, right up there and as far as the sea… all that is being sold with the farm as well? Am I right?’
‘Yes it is. But there’s no real beach on the other side. The only beach is the one on this side, in front of the house. There’s an iron age hill fort up there, and then just cliffs. There’s only one place where you can get down. A sort of stair, in the rocks. But it’s very wild over there.’
She remembered Finn, scrambling down these rocks in search of the gulls’ eggs, which her grandfather had liked to eat when he could get them. Tern eggs were ‘like the best caviar’ said Alasdair, although to her knowledge he had never tasted the stuff. It had been a perilous occupation since the birds would attack your unprotected head. She remembered waiting, anxiously, for Finn to reappear and the relief of seeing his upturned face as he clambered back up. He was holding the eggs in a leather bag, being careful not to break them. She had taken his hand and hauled him up
and over the edge, where he rolled onto the short turf, his long arms and legs starfished out, still keeping the eggs intact, laughing.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘They’re so savage. I thought they would peck my eyes out!’
‘Why wouldn’t they when you were raiding their nests? I would peck your eyes out as well!’
She shook the memories away with an effort. ‘Do you want to go up there?’ she asked the young man. ‘I’ll take you, if you like.’
‘No, no. I’ll take your word for it.’
Her grandfather had made a pot of tea. He slammed it down on the kitchen table, along with thick white mugs and a plate of shortbread from the post office. Nicolas had suggested real coffee. He had read somewhere that the scent of it encouraged buyers. Alasdair’s reaction to this was unrepeatable. He only ever drank Camp coffee with Nestlé’s condensed milk. When Kirsty was little, she used to steal a sweet, sticky teaspoonful or two from the tin which he kept in the kitchen cupboard. She knew that Alasdair wanted to tell this smart young man to bugger off and leave him in peace. The injustice of it all rose like bile in her throat. This is his home, she thought. His home that we are selling over his head. And I’m doing this to my own grandfather!
The young man took off his jacket, sat down at the kitchen table and drank his tea.
Partly to break the silence, she said ‘Excuse me for asking, but you don’t exactly seem very interested in the property.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Didn’t your husband tell you? I’m acting for a client.’
‘No he didn’t tell me.’
Par for the course, she thought. Another southerner with more cash than sense, and a wholly illusory impression of life on a small Scottish island.
‘Did he say anything to you, grandad?’
Alasdair shook his head. ‘When did your Nicolas ever confide in me?’
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