Bird of Passage

by Catherine Czerkawska

  ‘It’s not a dream.’

  ‘But you’re only here for the day. You’re going away again?’

  ‘Only for a little while. Just to sort things out.’

  ‘And the house? What are you going to do with the house?’

  I’m planning to live there. What else? Maybe even farm in a small way. I’ve bought enough of the land to make that possible. And I’ve got some consultancy work.’

  ‘What kind of consultancy?’

  ‘Engineering. Don’t look so surprised. You can change your whole life around in twelve years, if you’re single minded. And I was single minded, Kirsty. But I made a discovery about myself as well.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I’m quite bright.’

  ‘I always told you you were.’

  ‘You and your grandfather both.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘To Glasgow at first. I managed to get a job and some qualifications. And then I got a grant and a university place to do engineering. I’ve even worked in the USA. I saved quite a lot. I had very little to spend my money on. But now I’ve got the compensation money as well, I can afford to waste a bit of time on a smallholding.’

  ‘Most of the stock has gone.’

  ‘It’s alright. We’ll start again. I’m in no hurry about this, Kirsty.’

  Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, my grandad!’ She started to laugh. ‘He’s waiting to meet the new owner. You didn’t tell him, did you? He isn’t keeping your secrets as well?’

  ‘No. I thought he might let it slip. To Nicolas. Do you think he’ll be pleased?’

  ‘When he gets over the shock, he will.’

  ‘We’ll go up there when we’ve had our coffee. But you’d better phone him and warn him who you’re bringing.’

  ‘The shock of just seeing you would kill him. It almost killed me, Finn! But what will I say to him?’

  ‘Well, there’s something else. And I want your grandfather to know before your husband does.’

  ‘What?’ she asked, but he just shook his head

  ‘We’ll talk about it at Dunshee.’

  Helplessly, she leant forward and seized his hand again. ‘Oh Finn !’

  At that moment, Heather came in, carrying a tray of coffee and cakes. If she was shocked to see Kirsty, hand in hand with the visitor, she remained remarkably composed. She was new to the island and had never met Finn before. Kirsty sprang away, blushing furiously.

  ‘This is Finn O’Malley,’ she said. ‘He’s the new owner of Dunshee, but we’re old friends. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was Finn who had bought it!’

  ‘That’ll have been a nice surprise for you.’

  ‘It’s a lovely surprise. We haven’t seen each other for years.’

  Heather smiled at Finn in a professional manner, put the tray down on the table, and left them to their coffee. But Kirsty felt as though there was something in the air of the room that certainly hadn’t been there before. Finn had brought it with him, like a cold wind blowing in from the sea.

  While he sat in silence, drinking strong black coffee, Kirsty phoned her grandfather.

  ‘I thought you’d be here by now,’ he said, plaintively.

  ‘There’s been a delay.’

  ‘Did he miss the ferry?’

  ‘No. No he’s here alright. And we’ll be coming up soon. But – I don’t quite know how to tell you this, grandad. It’s somebody you know.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Kirsty?’

  ‘The person who bought Dunshee. You know him. You know him very well.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone with that amount of cash. If I did I would have touched him for a bob or two long ago.’

  ‘You do. He just doesn’t want you to get a shock when you see him.’

  ‘Are you having me on, Kirsty?’

  ‘No. No, I’m serious.’

  ‘Well come on lass. Who the hell is it?’

  Finn gestured to her to give him the phone. She handed it over.

  ‘Hello there, Mr Galbreath,’ said Finn. ‘Alasdair. It’s me.’

  There was a very long pause. Then Finn said ‘Yes. Yes. I know. I’ll be with you in a little while. Yes. She’ll bring me up. I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.’ He hung up the phone. ‘We should go.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Kirsty.

  Finn grinned. ‘He said, “Are you the bloody bum that walked out on me?” But I think he wants to see me. We’d better go.’

  It was when they were up at Dunshee, that Finn dropped his second bombshell. He had left the bike at Ealachan and they had driven together in near silence, Kirsty at the wheel with Finn beside her. She was acutely conscious of his proximity, wanting to reach out and touch him all the time.

  Like Kirsty, Alasdair couldn’t hide his delight at the sight of the prodigal returned.

  ‘Oh lad, lad,’ he kept saying, ‘It does my heart good to see you. I know I should be angry, but you don’t know how good it is to see you again.’

  Finn sat down beside the kitchen range, stretching out his long legs in front of him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, and although he was talking to Alasdair, he was actually looking at Kirsty. ‘The thing is, I was wondering if you might just like to stay put, Alasdair.’

  ‘Stay put?’

  ‘Why should you move?’ asked Finn. ‘This was always your home. Did you really think I would come along and ask you to move out of it?’

  He cast a look at Kirsty that was both malicious and amused.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Finn?’ asked Kirsty.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. We lived together for enough years. Nobody was ever as kind to me as you, Alasdair. Nobody. I’m sure we could live together again. What do you say?’

  ‘And I don’t have to move anything? Not my furniture?’

  ‘Not a stick of it. Nor yet your sheep, nor the chickens, nor the dog.’

  ‘Then I’ll stay. But I don’t know how I can ever begin to thank you, lad.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me. I have more than enough to thank you for. I’ll be in your debt till the end of my days.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Finn. He glanced at Kirsty. ‘But there’s one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You have to leave the picture for me, Kirsty. I love the picture. The one of the farm among the flowers.’

  ‘Of course. I did it for my grandad anyway. But what am I going to tell Nick about all this?’

  ‘What does it have to do with him?’ asked Alasdair.

  ‘He has a house all ready for you, Grandad.’

  ‘So you want me to move down there, do you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘It won’t go to waste. He can use it for something else now, can’t he? Find himself another tenant. Use it as a holiday cottage.’

  ‘But I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. He’ll think I knew. He’s going to think I knew all about this, and didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ asked her grandfather.

  ‘I thought some publicity-shy celebrity had bought it.’

  Finn was enjoying her discomfiture. Sometimes, as the transaction progressed, he had wondered what the hell he was doing, and why. Now, he put his hands behind his head and leant back on the familiar sofa, watching her. ‘Ah God, God,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to be home again!’

  Nicolas was very angry. Kirsty had never before seen anyone incandescent with rage, but that’s how she would have described him. And she had been right. He was instantly and uncharacteristically suspicious of her role in the transaction.

  ‘Did you know about this, Christine?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’d have told you.’

  ‘So he didn’t tell you beforehand? Or your grandfather?

  ‘It came as a complete surprise to both of us. And you needn’t look so sceptical. I would have told yo
u.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘Then why all the secrecy? Why couldn’t he have come clean?’

  ‘I think he wanted it to be a surprise for my grandad.’

  ‘Well, it was certainly that. And completely irresponsible. It could have killed the old man.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  They had had arguments in plenty over the years, but none where he had accused her of breaking the trust between them.

  ‘I think he wanted to have everything settled first. And you weren’t exactly on good terms when he left, were you?’

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  ‘Well he’s quite different now.’

  ‘So I gather. And do you know, it was all that compensation or the knock-on effect of it that meant we had to sell in the first place.’

  ‘There’s a certain justice in it then, isn’t there?’

  ‘That’s not what I would call it. This is all nonsense.’ Nicolas was pacing about the room. Kirsty saw that he was still furious. Furious. ‘The house is all ready and waiting for Alasdair. It’s cost me a great deal of money to renovate it. I won’t make the offer twice.’

  ‘You don’t need to. Finn and my grandad always got on well. There’s no reason to suppose they won’t get on just as well now. And you’ll easily find another tenant for the bungalow, so you’ll get a proper market rent for it. You can’t lose, Nick. I don’t really know what you’re complaining about.’

  The first thing Finn did was to take Kirsty’s room for his own, sleeping in her old bed, in the wall. It was a good six inches too short for him, but he didn’t seem to mind. Kirsty had been anxious about her grandfather for a week or two. In spite of all that she had said to Nicolas, she did wonder how they would get on, now that their positions were reversed, with Finn as the owner of the farm. But she needn’t have worried. The two seemed to have resumed their old, easy relationship and Alasdair looked happier than she had seen him since Isabel’s death.

  Everyone else was trying hard to be civilised, Nicolas especially. It was impossible to avoid Finn altogether on an island as small as this one. He was always polite whenever they met, and Nicolas was invariably courteous. Flora was shy of Finn. On their first meeting, she stood very close to her mother and refused to shake hands with him, bunching her skirt up and sucking her thumb, a baby habit that she only resorted to in stressful situations. Afterwards, she said ‘Why are you so happy mum? Is it because grandad doesn’t have to move?’ and Kirsty said ‘Yes – it’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

  Soon after, India came home for her half-term holiday. Flora was full of the news, and India had to pretend to be very blasé about it all. She walked up to Dunshee with her mother, but when she ran into the kitchen, there was Finn, sitting at the table and fiddling with his old fishing reel which he had found at the back of a cupboard. India seemed taken aback at finding him there, even though she had heard the whole story (several times over) from Flora. She and Finn stared at each other for a moment.

  Then he stood up. ‘You must be India.’

  He reached out and shook her by the hand.

  ‘How do you do?’ she replied, very solemnly, and went over to kiss Alasdair. ‘Can I play the fiddle, grandad? I’ve been learning new things at school.’

  Finn stood with his arms folded, listening to her, and when she had finished he said ‘You play beautifully.’

  She didn’t know how to respond to the compliment. Her self possession deserted her.

  ‘You’re a very clever little girl, India,’ he said.

  She coloured up and hung over the back of her grandad’s chair, scowling at Finn as though daring him to say anything else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Kirsty and Nicolas were planning to spend Christmas in London that year. Malcolm and Viola lived in a tall house in Maida Vale, its stonework crumbling, its paint flaking away from the walls. Kirsty was never comfortable there, although her daughters liked it very much. There was an old nursery at the top of the house which was a treasury of vintage toys: a Noah’s ark full of battered animals, a long legged horse on green rockers and a collection of Edwardian pond yachts. India and Flora were in their element.

  Kirsty didn’t want to go away for Christmas but Nicolas argued that her grandfather would have Finn to keep him company.

  ‘So you can go south without worrying about him,’ he said and she was forced to agree.

  Before they left, Kirsty drove up to Dunshee, through sleety rain. She took a heap of parcels for her grandfather: pipe tobacco, a packet of strong tea, (Alasdair hated teabags), chunky milk chocolate, a new walking stick with a curly horn handle, some fishing tackle. Among the parcels she had included a couple of gifts for Finn. One was a lavishly illustrated book of Celtic myths and legends including the story of Dermot and Grania. The other was a small photo frame in pewter. In it was a snapshot, taken years before, of Kirsty and Finn together, sitting in the old wooden boat, in shallow water. Finn’s hands were on the oars while Kirsty was smiling at the photographer. Her grandfather had taken the picture. She must have been about nine, just a bit younger than India was now, and Finn thirteen, so it was before he had moved to Dunshee permanently. Kirsty was wearing shorts and a navy blue Aran sweater. Her hair was in plaits. Finn was thin and long legged and his hair was a shaggy nimbus. He arrived each year as a shorn sheep and then it would grow as the summer progressed. Sometimes her mother had taken the shears to it, hacking off enough of it to make him decent again.

  She had found the photo when she was helping her grandfather to clear out his papers. It was the only picture she had ever found of the two of them together. She’d had it copied on the mainland, wanting to keep the original for herself. She had enjoyed choosing these things for him. But now, when she was handing them over, they seemed too intimate, too personal, the kind of clandestine gifts a woman might buy for her lover.

  Just before she left, he slipped his own little parcel into her coat pocket.

  It was heavy for its size and solid. Not having any proper wrapping paper, he had done it up in white writing paper. He leant in at the car window.

  ‘Enjoy your Christmas.’ The wind was whipping his hair around his face. His hands, gripping the edge of the window, looked red and raw with the cold.

  ‘I’ll try!’

  She turned up her face to him, tilting her cheek slightly, but he leant in, cradled the back of her head with one hand and kissed her hard on the mouth. His lips were cool and dry. The sudden stab of desire in the pit of her stomach took her by surprise. Her response to him was so immediate that it was as much as she could do to prevent herself from leaping out of the car and embracing him. With an effort of will, she stayed where she was.

  This is impossible, she thought. Nothing’s the same and you can’t do it.

  He released her, but she grasped at his fingers, anxious to maintain the contact between them as long as possible. She looked up at him and saw the darkness behind his eyes.

  I know him so well, she thought. But perhaps she hardly knew him at all. Her stomach churned in apprehension.

  A squall was passing over and a sudden flurry of rain on the windscreen blinded her and drenched him. There were droplets on his eyelashes. He turned away and stumbled back inside the house. She sat there for a moment or two before she could bring herself to start the engine and drive back down to Ealachan.

  It was Christmas night before she could find the time to open his gift. She had left it nestling at the bottom of her handbag. Now, when everyone else was in bed, exhausted by massive intakes of food and drink, she seized a few moments for herself. She wondered what Finn could have given her. Nowadays, if she wanted to wear the arrowhead pendant, she kept it tucked inside a sweater but sometimes she wondered if Nicolas ever really looked at her closely enough to notice it. How had that happened? When had love become familiarity? When had he stopped gazing at her as though unable to believe his good fortune in marrying her an
d begun, instead, to jolly her along as though humouring a difficult child? What fault line between them had opened so gradually that she had barely noticed it?

  She unwrapped the white paper, and a stone tumbled into her lap. She recognised it at once; not this particular stone, but where it came from. It was an agate from the beach below Dunshee, or rather a half agate with the flat, oval face polished. It didn’t have the gloss of a machine polished stone, but the matt shimmer of something which the sea itself had smoothed. One summer, she and Finn had become obsessed with stones and had spent many hours looking for agates, and identifying them with the help of a book from her grandfather’s shelf. Finn had been reluctant at first but gradually, he too had been drawn in. They had been as enchanted by the names of the different stones as they were by the agates themselves: white chalcedony, blue chalcedony, celadonite, jasper, carnelian, moss agate, onyx agate, thunder egg.

  This was a blue-grey quartz with streaks of green celadonite in it. It was a scenic agate with a landscape frozen into the quartz, a world within a world. A mass of mossy clumps at the base were seaweed clad rocks, or maybe twisted roots. Further off was a milky blue sea with white-topped waves. Some variation in the quartz gave the impression of a broad path which lead to the horizon, like the reflection the moon made when it was full. There were mountains in the distance and turbulent light in the sky, like the moon riding high above clouds. Mysteriously, some brownish fault in the quartz was a small boat with figures in it, just heading out to sea. There was a scrap of paper with it.

  ‘This is a talisman,’ he had written. ‘I found it the first time I went back down to the beach. I think it was waiting for me. That’s the two of us. In your grandad’s boat. Setting out together. All my love Finn x.’

  She stared into it for a long time before she could bring herself to put it back in her bag and get into bed. She had the fleeting thought that maybe if she could find the right words, she and Finn could disappear into that enchanted landscape and stay there together, forever.