This Northern Sky

by Julia Green

  I finish my sandwich. The café fills up with more people who stare and smile. They all seem to know each other; it’s really obvious I don’t belong. I decide to go back to the house. Fiona’s house, Finn called it.

  It’s dead quiet inside.

  ‘Mum?’ I call out as I take off my sandy shoes.

  No one’s home. Mum’s left a note on the table.

  We’re walking to Hynish Bay. Join us when you wake up! We’ve left you the map. It’s easy to find the way. Hope you slept well. xx

  I spread out the map, to see where they’ve gone. It’s miles away. Still, they can talk and sort things out without me having to hear it all. It’s weird that they didn’t have a clue I was already up and out hours ago. Odd they didn’t check. Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe they made up after their argument and were so wrapped up in each other . . .

  There’s no point just sitting around here all day. I put my jacket back on and pick up the map and a bottle of water. I find my swimming things too, just in case, and shove everything in my bag. I put on proper walking boots this time and pull the door shut behind me.

  The air smells of salt. The wind has dropped a bit and now the sun’s higher it feels almost warm. Tiny brown birds flit from one clump of heather to the next. It’s so flat you can see for miles. Sea in all directions. The bluest sky, thin wisps of high cloud.

  Five

  ‘What did we use to do, when we came here when I was little?’ I ask Mum. We’re lying at the top of the beach, out of the wind.

  ‘The usual summery things,’ Mum says. ‘Beaches and sandcastles. Fishing with nets for crabs. Picnics. Bonnie and Hannah played with the other children on the beaches – those boys I mentioned, and their friends. We went for walks sometimes: you in the baby carrier on Dad’s back. He’d walk for miles with you, watching the seabirds, rare butterflies, that sort of thing; taking photographs. One year we hired bikes. We went on boat trips. Simple things like that. Everyone was happy.’

  She blinks back tears. I look away.

  ‘Are you going to swim?’ she asks. ‘It’ll be freezing, mind.’

  I shake my head.

  Dad’s clambering over the rocks at the far end of the beach. We both watch him: a dark shape silhouetted against the blue backdrop of shining sea. The light’s dazzling.

  ‘Shall we go and join him?’ I say.

  ‘You go,’ Mum says. ‘I’m going to lie here in the sun for a while longer.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he take photographs any more?’ I ask.

  Mum shrugs. ‘There are lots of things he doesn’t do now that he used to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Singing. Playing music. He was writing songs and poems when I first met him.’

  I look at him. Dad? Singing? I can’t imagine it. How come I never knew about that before?

  ‘But he packed a camera to bring with him this holiday,’ Mum says wistfully. ‘So perhaps he’s planning to start taking photos again.’

  I find Dad hunkered down next to a huge rock pool. ‘Come quietly and have a look at this,’ he says. ‘Keep your shadow off the water.’

  It’s a whole other world in there, with its miniature forests and grasses and tiny speckled fish; limpets and anemones and shrimpy things darting across the bottom. Beyond the rocks, the sea rushes and breaks, all sparkly and wild and moving, but the surface of the water in the rock pool is barely ruffled. We both look up as a flock of geese fly over, their wings beating the air in a steady rhythm.

  ‘There’s a sight,’ Dad says. ‘Should’ve brought the binoculars with us on the walk.’

  ‘Or your camera,’ I say pointedly, but he doesn’t pick up on it.

  ‘Wild geese. Heading home.’ Dad watches them, and I watch him. He starts saying lines from a poem. Something about being lonely, and the world calling to you, like the geese.

  ‘Mary Oliver,’ he says. ‘Know it?’

  I shake my head.

  Dad’s already moving on, stepping over the rocks, peering into other pools.

  Is Dad lonely? I’m thinking. Is that what’s wrong with him?

  I follow him. ‘What’s that called?’ I point at different coloured seaweeds; tiny fish; red blobs of sea anemone. It’s a way to get closer to him: paying attention to the things he likes. It’s what Mum should be doing, I think crossly. It’s as if she’s stopped trying.

  ‘You can eat some of these seaweeds,’ Dad says. He shows me something that looks a bit like limp wet lettuce. ‘The whole island is a wonderful example of how an ecosystem works.’ He explains to me about the machair: the beach-meadows where hundreds of flowers and tiny plants grow on the calcium-rich mix of sand and peat. ‘It’s one of Europe’s rarest ecosystems,’ Dad says. ‘Created during the Ice Age, from the shells of marine animals that died when sea temperatures dropped. Now, the cattle graze the machair and fertilise it. It’s pretty unique, this place.’

  Dad points out different birds. He actually sounds cheerful.

  ‘You don’t ever talk like this at home,’ I say.

  Dad hunches his shoulders. ‘You don’t get a lot of curlews and dunlin and ringed plovers in our bit of the suburbs,’ he says. ‘Not much seaweed either. And no machair at all.’

  ‘Why do we stay living there, if you hate it so much?’ I ask.

  ‘Our jobs. Your school. Friends. My aged parents. The small practicalities of real life and earning a living.’ He looks at me. ‘I didn’t say I hated it, Kate.’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  He doesn’t answer that.

  ‘Did you see anything interesting?’ Mum asks when I get back to the top of the beach. She’s spread out a picnic. ‘Want some tea?’ She pours out a cup for me from the flask.

  ‘You should have come and looked too,’ I tell her.

  ‘I can see well enough from here,’ Mum says. ‘I’ve been enjoying the sun. It’s more relaxing, up here out of the wind.’

  ‘Did you see the geese?’

  ‘Yes. The wings make a lovely sound, don’t they? Your grandma loved to see wild geese.’ She passes me a sandwich. I peel it open, pick out the cheese and bits of tomato and leave the bread. Mum frowns but she doesn’t say anything.

  Dad’s slowly making his way back up the beach. He stops every so often to look at things left by the tide. He brings us each a shell. Mine is small and grey-blue, with shiny mother-of-pearl inside. I put it in my jacket pocket. While they eat their lunch, I doodle patterns in the sand with the rib of a feather. The sound of the waves is a constant background roar, smoothing out my mind and washing it clean. I feel a long way from home, from anyone really. Today, I don’t mind. It’s strangely restful, stopping thinking for a change.

  The three of us doze in the sun: even Dad. Mum’s turned away, on her side. When I next look round, I notice Dad’s hand on the small of her back, just resting there. I close my eyes again. Maybe it is going to be all right, after all.

  The walk home is peaceful too, to begin with: we don’t talk much. We’re all gradually getting used to a different pace: island time, Mum calls it. Every so often a car or tractor rumbles along the road and we have to stand up on the bank at the edge of the single-track road to let it pass, but there’s hardly any traffic really.

  The sound of an engine roaring up behind us makes us stop still and stand well back. ‘Idiots!’ Dad shouts. ‘Slow down!’

  It’s the mud-splattered jeep from the ferry. It brakes suddenly, slows right down and stops. For a second I think Dad’s going to start having a go at the driver, but before he can say anything, someone’s calling my name. ‘Hey, Kate!’

  It’s Finn. He’s in the front passenger seat, leaning out to wave at me. I’m so surprised I wave back. I guess the driver is one of his older brothers: he looks a bit similar, but with longer, crazier hair. He grins. ‘Want a lift? Not much space, but we don’t mind if you don’t!’

  Dad and Mum both look confused.

  ‘No thanks,’ I say quickly. ‘We want to walk.�
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  ‘OK.’ The jeep pulls forwards again. I hear someone say something: a girl’s voice. Finn turns and looks out of the window, back at me. I feel myself blush.

  ‘I met him earlier,’ I say. ‘He’s the boy we saw running near the house, Mum.’

  ‘They ought to know better,’ Dad says. ‘Driving like that on this road.’

  ‘I expect they know the road pretty well,’ Mum says. ‘They’re the lads from the Manse. The girls used to play with the twins, remember? They’ll have been along here hundreds of times.’

  Dad grumbles under his breath. ‘No excuse for dangerous driving. Fools. They’ll come off the road if they’re not careful.’

  Why does Dad have to spoil everything? It’s a reference to Sam’s driving, obviously. For my benefit.

  Mum tries to smooth things over. She talks about the time when Bonnie and Hannah joined in a sandcastle competition with the boys from the Manse. They made a sand volcano: one of the boys made an actual fire in the top, so it would smoke like a real volcano. But they still didn’t win . . . Dad says he doesn’t remember. He points out a field where you can see corncrakes, according to the guidebook back at the house.

  I walk behind them. I can’t stop thinking about Sam now I’ve started. What’s he doing, right now? Is he thinking about me? What’s going to happen to him? Does he blame me?

  It seems a long way back to the house. My feet ache. I make myself think about Bonnie instead, on her Spanish farm. I imagine her in bright sunshine, the golden light as afternoon merges into evening. I wish I was there with her. Anywhere but here.

  Six

  Tuesday morning. Dad’s gone out with the binoculars to watch birds on the loch; Mum’s having coffee with Fiona, who owns our house and lives on the mainland usually but is staying at the hotel this week. I didn’t even know there was a hotel.

  So, it’s just me, looking for something to do.

  I’ve even been to the one-room museum (ten minutes max to see everything), and now I’m busy reading the noticeboard outside the village shop (Ceilidh on Friday night: all welcome; wetsuits for sale; sheepdog puppies ready end of August; meeting about the wind farm project).

  I hear voices. Finn, and the older boy who was driving, and a girl about the same age with long straight dark hair, are coming out of the shop loaded up with plastic carrier bags.

  ‘Finn, it’s your friend again!’ the boy says.

  This time it’s Finn who blushes. But he quickly recovers himself. ‘Kate,’ he introduces me. ‘My brother Piers and this is his friend Thea.’ He emphasises the word friend and everyone laughs.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  Thea smiles and holds out her hand to shake mine. This is a bit weird, of course – old-fashionedly polite, like the dad – but I don’t mind really so I shake her hand and then Piers’s too. (I have to ask Dad how to spell the name – Peers? Pierce? It’s Middle or Old English, apparently. There’s a medieval poem called Piers Plowman.)

  ‘We’re going to have a barbecue on the beach later,’ Piers says. ‘You should come. Shouldn’t she, Finn?’ He turns to me again. ‘Finn could do with some company of his own age.’

  ‘Piers, stop it!’ Thea says. ‘Ignore him, Kate.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘Thanks. It sounds good.’

  ‘You can come back to the Manse with us now. We’ll wait in the jeep, up by the telephone box, while you tell your parents.’

  ‘Sorry. He’s so bossy,’ Thea says. ‘He’s used to being in charge.’

  ‘Someone has to be!’ Piers says.

  I quite like it. It means I don’t have to decide what to do: they all just assume I’ll come along, and seeing as I don’t have any plans of my own I might as well.

  ‘I’ll write a note for Mum,’ I say. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Finn walks to the house with me and waits at the gate while I go inside and write the note and grab my bag and a coat. I check my hair in the mirror quickly – not that it matters very much, seeing as the wind will mess it up the minute I go outside.

  I go to the front door and call to Finn. ‘Should I bring anything with me?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, we got everything we need at the shop.’

  The jeep rattles and bumps and jolts and it’s impossible to stay sitting upright. I keep falling against Finn, next to me in the back with all the bags of shopping. He laughs. Piers puts a disc into the jeep’s CD player and suddenly music is blasting out: piano and violins and saxophone: quite beautiful and haunting and a bit weird, like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

  ‘I’ll turn your symphony down a bit,’ Thea says. ‘We don’t want to upset your parents.’

  ‘Joy and Alex won’t mind!’ Piers shouts back. ‘They like my stuff, actually!’

  ‘Not at this volume!’ Thea turns round in the front seat to talk to me. ‘Piers’s and Finn’s parents are amazing,’ she says. ‘You’ll love them. Everybody does. They are incredibly kind and generous. There are going to be at least ten people staying at the Manse this summer.’

  ‘Not all at the same time,’ Finn says. ‘And there’s only us at the moment. Jamie’s coming down with Tim and the London crew at the weekend.’

  For a moment I’m imagining a whole film crew – till I realise it’s just what posh people call a group of friends.

  Thea explains. ‘Jamie is Piers’s twin. Finn’s other brother. Tim’s an old friend of Jamie and Piers, but he’s sort of everyone’s friend now. He’s been coming here for years, every summer. He loves the island almost as much as Finn does. And Joy and Alex love him like another son.’

  ‘I think I saw your parents before,’ I tell Finn. ‘Driving an old taxicab.’

  ‘That’s them!’ Thea says. ‘Crazy, yes? To still be driving that old thing on these roads with all the potholes. But they like old things. They keep everything until it falls apart. Literally!’

  We’ve arrived at the Manse. Piers parks the jeep in the layby near the house and we pile out with all the shopping and walk round to the back door, which is already open.

  The kitchen’s large, old-fashioned, with a range and a big wooden table and chairs, everything a bit tatty. We stack the bags on the table and Thea starts putting things in cupboards. Piers fills the kettle and puts it on the range. Finn gets out mugs for tea.

  ‘We can’t get a fire going for the barbecue till the tide’s gone down,’ Finn explains. ‘We’ve got our own bit of beach but only at low tide.’ He looks at his watch. ‘In about two hours.’

  Two whole hours! I’m going to be here all day at that rate. I’m suddenly shy, tongue-tied.

  But I needn’t have worried. Everyone else talks practically non-stop. They talk about music, and books, and their friend Tim, who has a new job as some sort of sales rep for a publisher and so gets a company car. I work out that they are all students, apart from Finn (still at school, one year to go) and Tim. Piers is studying for a PhD in music and wants to be a composer. His twin, Jamie, plays lead guitar in a band. Their parents are retired now, but Joy was a scientist and Alex worked as an antiquarian bookseller, which explains why the Manse is full to bursting with books, old prints and paintings. It even smells of old things: musty, slightly damp.

  They start discussing some of the jobs that need to be done now everyone’s here for the holidays.

  ‘We need to get the peat in,’ Joy says. ‘We’re already late. Most of the crofters did theirs way back in June. We’ve cut most of it, but it’s got to be brought back here and stacked so it will dry and be ready for winter. If everyone helps it won’t be so exhausting.’

  ‘Of course.’ Thea nods.

  Joy seems to notice me for the first time. ‘You’re the girl we passed on the road the other day, aren’t you?’ she says. ‘You’ve all met already, then.’

  ‘Poor Kate didn’t stand a chance,’ Thea says. ‘We whisked her up and brought her here for the barbecue.’

  ‘You’re not an island girl though?’

  ‘No.
Just on holiday,’ I say. ‘I hope it’s all right, me being here.’

  Joy smiles. ‘Of course it’s all right. You are very welcome. It will be nice for Finn.’

  Everyone keeps saying that. Why? I wonder.

  Joy seems old for a mum. But then, she has grown-up children as well as Finn. But Mum does too, and Joy seems much older than Mum. Not just the grey hair and the glasses. Her clothes, perhaps. And her hands, and the way she speaks.

  Alex comes downstairs. He watches everyone from the kitchen doorway. His eyes twinkle at me, as if he’s pleased I’m there too, but he doesn’t say much. Finn pours tea for everyone from a big brown pot. A marmalade cat sidles in and winds in and out of everyone’s legs under the table before jumping up and settling itself on Joy’s lap. Piers wanders off and a few minutes later the house is full of the sound of piano music: loud chords and impossibly intricate notes.

  ‘What are you going to cook on the barbecue?’ Joy asks.

  ‘Sausages, veggy kebabs, mackerel if Finn can catch some!’ Thea says.

  Finn looks at me. ‘Want to come and catch fish?’

  I’ve never been fishing before so I just watch. It’s cold, mind. I wrap myself up in the old blanket we brought from the house to sit on. You’re not supposed to make a noise when you fish, apparently, so we don’t talk. Every so often I forget, and ask Finn a question, and he answers very quietly. He’s too polite to tell me to shut up.

  ‘Do Alex and Joy live here all year round?’ I ask.

  ‘Only since last year, when they both retired. They bought the Manse for our holidays originally, way back when houses were cheap as chips.’

  ‘So do you come here every holiday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t you get bored? Wouldn’t you like to see other places?’

  Finn stares at me as if I’m crazy. ‘No. I’m never bored. I’d live here all the time if I had my way. I can’t wait to leave school and then I can.’