This Northern Sky

by Julia Green

  ‘It sounds complicated,’ I say.

  ‘Not really. It’s easier if everyone helps. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.’

  Everyone’s quite a lot older than us. Finn isn’t intimidated like me, but that’s because he knows them all and, in any case, he’s the one who seems to know the most about the peat and the traditional ways to do things, more than his older brothers even.

  Piers and Thea climb into the jeep.

  ‘Here’s Jamie and Clara,’ Finn says. ‘Come and say hello.’

  Jamie’s a rounder, more solid version of Piers, with fairer, curlier hair. Clara is petite and gorgeous, with short fair hair and almond-shaped eyes like a pixie.

  ‘This is Kate,’ Finn tells them. ‘She’s staying at Fiona’s place for the summer.’

  ‘Hi,’ Clara says. ‘Nice to meet you, Kate.’

  Jamie nods but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘We’ll see you up there,’ Finn says.

  We climb back on the bike. But it’s too difficult to pedal uphill with me: we walk the long way back up the slope until the track levels out again.

  This part of the island is covered in springy heather, humming with bees. There are silvery trails of water between black banks of peaty soil, pools reflecting sky. Now, ahead of us, I can see lines of people working at the peat banks. Finn’s smiling, waving. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he says to me. ‘To think we’re doing the exact same work that’s been done on the island for hundreds of years. Except in the old days people would have horses and carts rather than jeeps and cars, of course.’

  I think of Mum, at the garden centre, choosing compost. ‘I thought we were running out of peat?’ I say. ‘Like you’re not supposed to buy it for gardening any more.’

  ‘That’s totally different. Yes, it’s terrible where peat extraction’s happened on a huge mechanical scale, like in parts of Ireland. But this is small scale, sustainable, hand-cutting for one family’s domestic use. It’s like the difference between small scale fishing in a little family boat, versus those vile enormous trawlers with dredge nets that bring up everything off the seabed.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ I say quickly before he goes on. ‘Sorry. I guess I’m just pig ignorant.’

  He gives me a look. ‘Stop it!’

  ‘I know, I’m doing it again. It’s a habit.’

  ‘A bad one!’

  Tim’s really efficient: he does most of the heavy carrying, lifting the sacks up into the back of the jeep. The rest of us fill the sacks, but talking and larking about at the same time. Piers recites a poem by some Irish poet; he tells me about the Tollund man, found perfectly preserved in a Danish peat bog. Finn works the hardest, of course, cutting a new line of fresh peat with the specially designed spade. Piers and Jamie follow behind, digging the peat and stacking it up. Piers sings at the top of his voice and Jamie joins in. They don’t care in the slightest what anyone thinks. They’re enjoying themselves too much.

  ‘Are you having a good holiday?’ Tim asks, as he waits for me to fill up a sack.

  ‘Yes.’ I realise I almost am, in spite of everything. ‘Though it’s not at all how I imagined it would be.’

  He heaves the sack up and dumps it in the jeep. ‘What did you imagine?’

  ‘I don’t know. I had no idea the island was going to be this small, and remote, and so different from anywhere I’ve ever been. Remember being,’ I correct myself. ‘I was here as a baby. And I suppose I didn’t imagine meeting people . . . making new friends. Doing stuff like this and actually enjoying it!’

  ‘You’re here with your family?’

  ‘Mum and Dad. Not my sisters. They’re older . . . they’re doing their own thing this summer. Well, Hannah’s working.’

  He listens while I talk about them. He has gorgeous brown eyes. He’s incredibly handsome. I wonder what Bonnie or Hannah would think.

  I find myself telling him more than I meant to, little by little.

  ‘The worst thing is that my parents are on the verge of splitting up. The holiday was supposed to make things better, but it hasn’t. If anything, it’s made it worse.’ I blink back tears.

  Tim puts his arm round my shoulders and hugs me. ‘I’m sorry, Kate.’

  I wriggle away, embarrassed.

  He doesn’t take any notice. ‘That’s harsh. It really is. But you’ll be OK. Really. It’s happened to so many of us. Thea. Me. It gets easier, believe me. You’ll find that too, given time. But it is very hard to begin with. I understand that.’

  I look over at Thea, smiling at something Jamie’s just said. You can’t tell, I’m thinking. No one would know from the outside. Tim, even! I don’t know why that comes as a surprise to me, but it does. For me, it’s like this horrible shameful thing, as if it’s my fault, a weakness in me, something I should have been able to stop . . .

  But I can’t say any of that out loud. Not to Tim, not to anyone.

  Tim’s still talking. ‘And the best thing to do is to keep busy. Don’t think about it too much. So let’s get that next sack filled and into the jeep.’

  Piers starts reciting lines from another poem: ‘Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper,’ he announces pompously. Jamie and Clara join in.

  Tim pulls a face and makes me laugh, despite everything.

  Back at the Manse, Finn goes straight up to have a bath. So I look after myself. I go along the bookcases, searching for a copy of Wordsworth’s poems. I find the one they were chanting up on the peat beds about the Highland girl singing. I copy my two favourite lines into my notebook:

  Breaking the silence of the seas

  Among the farthest Hebrides.

  Piers smiles when he sees what I’m reading. ‘I’ll find you the Heaney poems about the Bog People too,’ he says.

  No one thinks it’s the least bit odd that I’m curled up with a book and a cup of tea, reading poetry. I guess this is how they live all the time. Joy brings in freshly baked cake: fruit tea-bread, and ginger cake with sticky bits. ‘For the workers,’ she says. ‘Tuck in. You’ve all done a great job and I’m very thankful. Now we can heat the Manse all winter.’

  I wonder what Dad would say if he saw me here, like this. Pleased, I guess, that at last I’m showing some interest in poetry. And Mum? She’d be envious, more likely, of the company. Like when she talked about watching Finn’s family and friends on the beach, years ago. It looked fun, she said, in that wistful tone. As if she’d wished she could be part of it too.

  How isolated Mum and Dad have become. How strange that I’ve not noticed till now how almost all their friends have drifted away . . .

  Finn hasn’t reappeared after his bath, and as I’m here as his guest, it makes me feel a bit odd. Should I go home now? But no one seems to be bothered about me still being here, and it’s cosy and friendly and much nicer than walking back to the house, not knowing what I’ll find when I get there.

  Eventually Alex and Joy invite me to stay for supper, so I do. Finn comes downstairs at last. He doesn’t pay me any particular attention. Tim does though. He makes sure I feel at home. He sits next to me and chats about his job in publishing. He’s a sales representative, selling books to supermarkets. He travels all the time.

  He’s grown-up, with a proper job and a flat and a car and everything, but he’s kind, not scary or showing off how clever he is, like the others do a bit. Not Finn, I don’t mean, because he’s not clever-clever in an academic way. Though the way Finn talks about the island, it sometimes seems a bit like he’s lecturing me . . .

  ‘I can take you home after dinner if you like,’ Tim says.

  Thea looks up: she watches us for a while.

  Tim notices her watching. ‘Want to come with me to take Kate home?’ he asks her.

  She shakes her head. ‘Ask Finn,’ she says.

  But he’s busy, it seems. Other things to do. Perhaps it’s just a signal to me: that he’s not interested in me that way. It feels a bit like a snub, but I know I am overly sensitive about these things. So Molly always says.
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  It’s actually rather nice being driven by Tim in his big estate car. He drives slowly and carefully: very different from Piers. He talks a bit more about his work. He drives around the country selling books. He’s travelled all over the world, but he loves it here on this island more than anywhere else, even the most exotic places.

  ‘Really?’ I say. ‘What, even more than the Seychelles or the Caribbean?’

  ‘Yes!’ he says. ‘Even more than those.’

  The car bumps over the cattle grid. Tim carries on talking. ‘How about you? What job might you do when you grow up, Kate?’

  Those two little words – grow up – make me cringe. He thinks I’m just a child.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I say. ‘It’s too hard to know what I could do. Like there must be loads of jobs I haven’t even heard of. I don’t know how you find out.’ I look at him. ‘Did you always know what you wanted to be?’

  He laughs as if I’ve said something hilarious. ‘A lifelong ambition to be a sales rep, you mean?’

  I shrug.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I wanted to be a writer or a broadcast journalist.’

  ‘And do you still?’

  He looks at me, still faintly amused. ‘Well, of course. You don’t stop dreaming, just because you’ve grown up! Haven’t your parents told you that?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘They don’t tell me anything.’

  That shuts him up. And in any case we’ve arrived, and he’s parking up on the grassy verge near the house. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, when the engine’s stopped. He puts his hand on my shoulder lightly. ‘I touched a raw nerve. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ I lie. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ I shut the car door and walk away quickly.

  Dad’s in his usual seat at the window. He looks as if he’s about to say something, but I go straight upstairs before he can.

  I lie on my bed. Stare through the low window at the framed square of sea, rock, grass, sky. Gradually I calm down.

  I know a bit about what Dad’s dreams used to be because of what Mum told me the other day when we were on the beach. And Mum? She wanted lots of children: the family she didn’t have as a child. I remember her telling me ages ago that for a while she’d thought of having her own business . . . something like a community family centre, where people could come together to play and meet each other, with a café and a toys and books library, and classes for children and adults to learn how to make things, or dance or play music. Only she couldn’t work out how to earn money that way.

  And what about me, and my dreams?

  All I ever wanted was for Mum and Dad to sort things out and stay together. Us be a family. Just for things to be OK. It didn’t seem much to ask.

  I did have this silly fantasy about Sam and me, once upon a time, going off together on some kind of adventure: travelling, I suppose, seeing the world and meeting different kinds of people – I was a bit vague about the details. Sam was always talking about getting away – being free. I didn’t think about how you get to do those things, about how you pay for them, or any of the practical stuff. I didn’t ever tell Sam about it even. It seems ridiculous now.

  Thirteen

  I’ve just finished breakfast when I see Finn through the front window, riding his bike up the track towards our house, one hand on the saddle of a second bike. The spare bike. I’m touched he remembered.

  I open the front door and step out on to the grass. It’s sunny, the air not warm exactly, but sweet and delicious.

  ‘Delivery of one bike.’ He smiles as he dismounts and wheels both bikes across the grass.

  ‘Doesn’t anyone else want to use it? You’ve got all those visitors now,’ I say.

  ‘Your need is as great as theirs. Greater even,’ Finn says.

  I frown slightly. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘No car at your disposal. All alone with no friends at your house for instant entertainment . . .’

  ‘Yeah, all right. No need to rub it in! Billy-no-mates, you mean!’

  Finn smiles. ‘Why don’t you get your stuff and come with me for a bike ride right now?’

  ‘OK!’ I grab my jacket from the hooks by the door, shove my feet into trainers. ‘Where, exactly? Mum will want to know. I keep getting into trouble for not telling them.’

  ‘To the beaches on the west coast. So bring your swimming things. We’ll go via Isla’s house and see if she wants to come too.’

  That changes everything. I’m disappointed, and cross with myself that I am, both at the same time. It’s not as if I fancy Finn, is it?

  Do I?

  I run back upstairs to find my swimming things. I hesitate, put back the sensible black costume and pick up my peacock blue bikini.

  By the time I’ve got back outside, Mum’s there chatting to Finn. Of course she likes him. She’s probably relieved I’m spending time with a boy like that instead of moping over Sam. But does she have to be so obvious about it?

  ‘I’m ready. Shall we go?’ I say to Finn.

  ‘Have a lovely time,’ Mum says. ‘It’s a perfect day for the beach. I’m almost tempted to join you.’

  I get on the bike quickly before Finn gets any ideas about inviting her along too.

  Finn cycles next to me so we can talk as we bowl along. ‘She’s nice, your mum. She seems happy enough. Are things going better with her and your dad?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell. They are speaking, and doing walks and things together.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it’s maybe too late.’

  Dad, at the phone box.

  We cycle on another three miles or so, round the big curve of the bay, as far as the turning to Isla’s house. ‘I’ll wait here,’ I tell Finn. ‘Catch my breath.’

  ‘She might not be in,’ Finn says. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  He takes ages. I sit on the top of a wooden field gate to wait. The sky’s a thin, transparent blue with streaks of fine white cloud. The wind’s blowing as usual, rustling the tall grasses. The sound of the sea has become so familiar to me I hardly notice it now, but it’s there all the time, more of a murmur than a roar today. A flock of little birds take off, windblown as they get higher: you can see them struggling and then giving in, going where the wind takes them, and dropping down into another area of thistles in the field of barley.

  It’s beginning to look so much more beautiful to me, this island landscape, than it did when we first arrived. The wide expanses of sky. How wild and untamed it seems, even though I know people have lived and farmed here for hundreds of years. Thousands, even. I can understand better why Finn wants it all to stay this way for ever. Why he’s so opposed to change, to the wind farm . . .

  Voices. Two bikes come into view. Finn’s face is flushed with happiness.

  ‘Hello, Kate,’ Isla says in her soft, lilting voice as they get nearer. ‘It’s a beautiful day. I’m glad you’re getting to see the island at its best.’

  The three of us cycle together, Isla in the middle. We go quite fast: I’m pleased I can keep up despite not having had much practice. No doubt Isla cycles everywhere all the time. Her bike is old and she doesn’t have gears, but you hardly need them. We only see two cars the whole way.

  The road peters out and becomes a track. It gets narrower and goes uphill, then stops altogether. The wind’s stronger: a westerly blowing in across the Atlantic. We park up the bikes. Finn padlocks them together.

  ‘Why?’ Isla says. ‘There’s absolutely no need, Finn. No one’s going to steal a bike!’

  ‘Better to be sure,’ he says. ‘It’s not just islanders here in the summer. There are tourists, visitors. So you can’t really know.’

  ‘Three men from the wind farm project arrived on the ferry yesterday,’ Isla says. ‘They’re staying at Martinstown. They are hoping to win hearts and minds, Dad says, with the new exhibition at the hall.’

  Finn frowns. ‘Not again!’

  She looks out to sea.
‘You’d see it all really clearly from here.’

  ‘You’d see it wherever you were on the island,’ Finn says. ‘Daytime, and even more so at night. Hear it too.’

  Isla looks at him. ‘I don’t think so, not above the sound of the wind and the waves. But you would see it, you’re right about that. It would change this view for ever.’

  ‘Not just the view. It would change everything,’ Finn says. ‘We’ve got to do something, Isla. Make people wake up and understand what’s at stake. It’s not right that everyone with a vested interest gets a voice and we don’t.’

  ‘But we do. That was the whole point of the public consultation,’ Isla says. ‘And quite a lot of the islanders are in favour. They think we have to move with the times. It’ll bring jobs: the construction, and maintenance, servicing, all those sort of things. It will bring business here. It might mean young people can actually stay on the island and find work, instead of having to leave for the mainland.’

  ‘You sound as if you actually believe all that!’ Finn says.

  ‘I’m trying to be fair. We have to listen to what everyone wants. It’s easy for you to say you want things to stay exactly as they are. You don’t have to make a living here. Islanders have a long history of having to adapt and change.’

  I listen to them argue, back and forth.

  Isla’s good, I have to admit. Plus, she has the trump card of being born here, living here all the time.

  Finn has no answer to that.

  ‘Shall we go down to the beach?’ I say eventually. ‘Which way?’

  Isla leads. I notice how light she is on her feet; her easy, graceful way of walking. Halfway along, she stops to take off her shoes and walk barefoot over the peaty ground. ‘Try it,’ she says to me. ‘It feels delicious. The soles of your feet are as sensitive as your hands, did you know that?’