by Ann Cleeves
She had hoped that the islanders would do something special to mark her arrival, but it was all much more spectacular than she had imagined. She did not know that most of the islanders came to the harbour every boat day, and she thought that the whole of Kinness had turned out just to welcome her. There was a crowd and they all seemed to be waving and smiling. A banner reading JIM AND SARAH WELCOME HOME had been strung along the wall by the jetty. She felt like visiting royalty.
The other passenger tactfully left the boat first, quietly with no fuss, and disappeared into the crowd. Sarah stood, savouring the attention, the magic of being there, and waited for Jim to join her. He jumped on to the quay first. Instead of giving her his hand to help her ashore as she had expected, he took her into his arms and swung her on to the quay. The crowd cheered.
Other men went on to the boat then, and started to unload it. Sarah expected Jim to go with them to help, but he took her hand and led her off to introduce her to family and friends. She had met his immediate family at the wedding, but everyone wanted to take her hand, kiss her cheek. Jim stood close beside her, as if she might need protection from those people who only wanted to be friendly.
George Palmer-Jones, the elderly passenger, stood at the back of the crowd and watched with interest. He could not decide whether Sarah would settle on the island or not. He rather thought that she would not. He watched as Agnes, Jim’s mother, tried to introduce her youngest child to Sarah. The child, Mary, would not have it. She pulled away from her mother’s hand and would not look at Sarah. George thought that Mary was playing up on purpose because she knew that Agnes would be specially upset if there was a scene today. The girl’s face was red with the exertion of the tantrum, but she had a gleam in her eye as if she were enjoying herself immensely. Mary was twelve, but she behaved at times like a six-year-old. George thought that she was disturbed, but not as disturbed as she pretended to be. Perhaps if her deafness had been recognized earlier, or if Agnes had agreed to send her to a special school on the mainland, she might have been different.
“Come to meet your new sister-in-law,” Agnes said. She spoke very slowly and looked directly at Mary so that the girl could lipread. “ This is Sarah, Jim’s wife.”
“Don’t want to!” Mary said. It seemed to George that she emphasised the nasal, toneless quality of the voice. She was exaggerating her deafness.
She hid behind her mother and began to kick and scream. Sarah did not know how to react to the girl’s rudeness. She did not want her first day on the island spoilt by unpleasantness. She wished that Agnes would take Mary away. She was confident that she would win Mary round if she had the girl to herself. She was good with children. She had enjoyed her spell on the paediatric ward. She wanted children of her own. Lots of them. Of course her children would not be difficult or deaf.
She smiled at Agnes.
“Don’t upset her,” she said. “ There will be plenty of time for Mary and I to become friends. I’m sure that we will be.”
Behind her mother’s back, Mary was sticking out her tongue and rolling her eyes, but Sarah pretended not to notice.
When Sarah moved on to greet another group of islanders, Mary left her mother and ran along the quay to where George Palmer-Jones was standing. He was nervous of her unpredictable behaviour, but during his holidays on Kinness she seemed to have become attached to him and his wife. She always came to the school house to visit them at least once during their stay. He usually left his wife to deal with the child and now he did not know what to say.
“That’s a very pretty scarf you’re wearing, Mary,” he said. It was pretty. It was green silk with a batik pattern in black and white. “Where did you get it?”
She understood him immediately.
“It’s a secret,” she said. Then, after a pause: “Do you like secrets?”
“Very much.”
“So do I. Will you be at the party tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Will you dance with me? Nobody else will, except Daddy.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve another secret too. I’ll tell it you at the party. I want to see Uncle James with the lorry.”
She was gone. She ran down the road which led to her home, without waiting for her family, long legs and pigtails flying, the green silk scarf streaming behind her like a banner.
The men had finished unloading the boat. The diesel, gas, and provisions were stacked on the tractor and trailer. Jonathan Drysdale, the teacher, had been working with them. He left the other men, without a word, and joined George Palmer-Jones.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “We’ll have to hang around a bit longer if you don’t mind, until James comes with the lorry to take away the newlyweds. It’s all nonsense but I’ve been told by some upstart in the Education department in Baltasay that I should participate more in community affairs.”
They did not have long to wait. The lorry was big and very old. It had once been a coal lorry on the mainland. It had been on the island since Palmer-Jones had begun to visit. When it came down the hill to the quay now, driven by Jim’s uncle James, George could see that it had been transformed into a vehicle of magnificence. There were heart-shaped balloons tied to the cab and the whole base of the lorry was covered in pink and white paper flowers. There was a throne of flowers for the couple to sit on, and their names were sprayed in silver paint on the bonnet. It had become a carnival float of a lorry.
How embarrassing! thought George Palmer-Jones as the young people were carried on to the lorry. But the girl’s loving it. I hope that she doesn’t expect it to be like this always.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Jim said to Sarah. “I didn’t expect quite so much fuss.”
“It’s lovely,” she said.
It’s over the top, Jim thought. They never did this when Alec brought Maggie back to the island. What are they trying to do?
Then he saw a face in the crowd which he recognized. She’s here, he thought. I didn’t see her before. She must have been avoiding me. No one told me that she was here. So that’s why they’re making so much fuss. It’s their way of saying sorry.
The lorry pulled away to take them home. Small children in their Sunday-best jerseys ran beside it and cheered. Sarah threw paper flowers to them and released the balloons.
Chapter Two
When the lorry disappeared over the horizon, the people at the quay began to disperse. Most of them walked home. The tractor and trailer would deliver most of the goods, then end up at Kenneth Dance’s post office and stores. He would sort the mail and deliver it later. An old man and his sheep dog perched on the back of the trailer to get a lift down the island. The women and children walked back slowly together. The children were excited and dragged the balloons on strings behind them, but it was the same as every boat day. The women were talking about the preparation for the wedding party, but there were dances and parties throughout the autumn. The unloading of the boat had taken longer than usual—the sun was already low behind Ellie’s Head—but with the disappearance of the lorry and the new arrivals everything had returned to normal.
James stopped outside Unsta—their new home—but did not leave the lorry, and drove away at once. The house stood above a pebble beach which Jim called the Haven. There was a small garden in the front surrounded by a drystone wall. A bench made from driftwood stood against the whitewashed wall of the house. There was a storm porch in the middle of the house, with doors on either side.
“That’s in case of a gale,” Jim said. “You’d never be able to open a door straight into the wind.”
She waited outside for a moment, hoping that he might carry her in, but he seemed not to think of it. Perhaps lifting her on to the island from the boat had served the same purpose for him. She followed him into the house. It was small.
“There’s no bathroom,” he said immediately. “I explained to you that there’s no bathroom.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “ Really it’
s no problem.”
“If we decide to stay I can build one.”
“Of course we’ll decide to stay.”
The front door led into a narrow passage. There were only two rooms. On one side was the bedroom and on the other the kitchen, with a small scullery at the back. In the kitchen there was a range. The fire was ready to light. Sarah suddenly felt chilled, and tried not to shiver. There was a little essential furniture in the room—a kitchen table, a couple of chairs—but it looked cold and bare.
“Alec and Maggie gave us this,” Jim said. “For the time being. The old man who was here moved to the mainland to live with his sister and he took everything with him. Alec will bring our things on the tractor and trailer later.”
“It’ll be fun to start from scratch.”
Everything was spotlessly clean, but the net curtains which hung at the windows were frayed and tatty, and the lino had lost all its colour.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “Really. It’s lovely.”
He took her hand and led her towards the bedroom. He stopped her at the door, picked her up, and carried her inside.
George and Jonathan walked back slowly to the school house. Jonathan had lingered at the quay, looking out at the gannets fishing over the sea until the islanders had gone. George felt awkward. He had made friends on Kinness and would have liked to walk down the island with them.
“How’s Sylvia?” he asked
“Fine.”
He had never found Jonathan easy to talk to. Every time he visited Kinness he felt that he was in the school house on sufferance. Drysdale was polite but George felt that the politeness was an effort. Yet each year the invitation came, and after he left there was a warm and friendly letter saying how much Jonathan and Sylvia enjoyed Palmer-Jones’ visit.
“Did you have a good spring?” George asked.
Jonathan considered. “Not bad,” he said in the end. “ I broke my record for ringing auks. We didn’t have any very special migrants.”
He had a clipped, rather affected accent, which George found irritating. He must have been thirty-five but he still looked and sounded like a public-school boy. Molly, George’s wife, thought that Jonathan was shy, but that had never seemed to George a reasonable excuse for rudeness.
“I’ve been invited to the party tonight,” George said. “Sandy wrote to me specially. Will you and Sylvia be going?”
“We’ve been invited,” he said. “ Everyone on the island’s been invited. I suppose that we’ll have to go. Sylvia’s very keen. And as I said, I’ve been told to participate in community affairs.”
The school house was in the middle of the island. The classroom was in the same building. The house was grey, two-storeyed. They could see it from the road which wound round from the harbour. Nothing else broke the horizon. To the left of the road built into the hill, beyond a lochan smooth and round as a mirror, was Kell, the croft where James Stennet lived. It was immaculate, freshly whitewashed, with a neat pile of driftwood stacked by the back door. Then the road fell sharply past the low marshy area known as the Loons. In the spring it was covered with long grasses and flowers. Beyond that were the green folds of the clifftop and the sea. George forgot that Jonathan irritated him and enjoyed being on Kinness.
Sylvia had seen them coming and was at the door to meet them. For the first time since his arrival George felt welcome. She had long chestnut curls and a warm wide smile. There was tea made and hot scones and a fire in the grate in the living room.
“It is so nice to see you,” Sylvia said, and she approached George to be kissed. Her hair smelled of the hot scones and the fire.
She led them into the living room. It was light, a mix of traditional island croft and modern comfort. Sylvia sat on a sheepskin rug by the fire and gestured the others to sit down.
“Isn’t it lucky,” she said, “ that you could make it in time for the wedding party?”
She began to chat about the preparations for the evening. Jonathan got up and stood by the window. He said nothing.
Elspeth Dance sat in her parents’ home at the post office with her son on her knee. They were in the kitchen. Kenneth was sorting the mail on the table. Anne was putting the final decorations on the cakes which she had promised for the party.
“No one has told him that I’m back,” Elspeth said. “He was surprised to see me.”
“Does it matter?” Kenneth said. “ Surely not after all this time.”
“It matters to me,” Elspeth said. “ Someone should have told him. He should have been given the choice.”
“What choice? Do you really think it would have made any difference?”
“I don’t know. We were so close.”
Annie looked up from the cakes she was decorating meticulously.
“You’re making too much of it,” she said sternly. “ It’s all over. It was over years ago. Don’t you go stirring it up again.”
“Should I go to the party tonight then?”
“Of course you’ll go. You mustn’t disappoint Ben.” Annie looked tenderly at her grandson.
“Do you think Jim knows what happened?” Elspeth sounded frightened.
“How could he know?”
“I’m warning you,” Elspeth said. “There’ll be trouble.”
“Should I go over and see if they’ve everything they need?” Alec said.
“No. They’ve only been married a week. They surely want to be on their own. They’ve got everything they need. I’ve never seen such a fuss.”
Maggie was sandy-haired and sensible. She had been an infant teacher on Baltasay before they married. They had been to school together. She had no illusions about Alec or about the island when she moved to Kinness. “We didn’t have all that carry-on when we were wed,” she said, with a touch of regret.
“Would you have wanted it? We had the party.”
“I wouldn’t have had it any different.”
“Where are the boys?”
“In the garden playing. I’ll bring them in right at the last minute to get them changed and ready. Otherwise they’ll get dirty again.”
“Do you think that they’ll settle?”
“The boys?”
“No. Jim and Sarah.”
“I expect so. Given time. We did. Why?”
“If they moved off there’d be nothing to stop me buying the Unsta land. We need more land if we’re going to make any sort of living.”
She had heard it all before.
“Your father managed and he has less land than us.”
“Things have to change.”
“Things will change. Sandy and Agnes won’t be able to stay at Sandwick forever. Especially when Will goes. Then they’ll need someone to work their land. But this isn’t the time to discuss it with Jim. There’ll be time enough for that.”
“But what will happen when Mum and Dad do have to leave Sandwick? You know what’s in the will. You know what arrangements will be made if they move somewhere smaller. They’re besotted by that child. I want more land. You want a bigger house with more room for the boys. But I’m not prepared to pay their price to get it.”
She thought that he still looked very young, much younger than her. He had very thick dark hair. His wasn’t an island face. It was dark, southern, brooding.
“Let it be for tonight,” she said. “ It’ll have to be sorted out, but not today.”
He shrugged agreement.
“And behave yourself this evening. Don’t have too much to drink. You always show yourself up.”
He took no notice. No woman was going to tell him how to behave. He went out into the yard to switch on the generator. His new tractor was there. It comforted him and encouraged him. Progress was possible on Kinness. He had proved it.
In Sandwick Will sat in his bedroom, keeping out of the way, until it was time to go to the party. Downstairs there was a muddle of preparation. His parents were always so disorganized, he thought with intolerance. Everything at Sandwick was so messy, chaotic.
He would be glad to go back to school. He missed his friends, the conversations in the hostel late at night, his status as a sixth former. Here, the only debate was about sheep and fish. He wondered how the Drysdales, who had experience of more civilized ways, could stand it.
Outside in the passage he heard Mary screaming as Agnes tried to brush her hair.
Mother’s so weak, he thought, listening to Agnes’ fraught, ineffectual words, and so dependent on Dad. My wife will be independent, a person in her own right.
He picked up his guitar and began to play, humming a folk tune to the chords.
“I hate you,” Mary was screaming. “I hate both of you.”
I don’t hate them, Will thought. They’re kind and generous and I love them. But I can’t spend the rest of my life here. It would kill me.
“But you must come,” James said. “You promised.” His head was thundering with tension, anger, and compassion. “ You’ll enjoy it.”
“I would have enjoyed it once,” Melissa said. She took his hand and tried to make her voice sound reasonable. She had been an actress once. She tried to recall the skill, but knew that she sounded shrill and unnatural.
“Look,” she said. “ I have tried. I did want to come. But you can’t understand the panic, when I think of all those people in the hall. I can’t face it. They won’t miss me.”
He gave in immediately. He knew that there was no point in trying to persuade her. At first he had been sympathetic about her moods and depressions. There had been cause enough. Miscarriage after miscarriage. And she had been so desperate for a child. But that had been years ago.
She had not come from Kinness, not from any of the other islands. That had been part of the problem. When he first met her she had not seemed to have come from anywhere. She was getting off the big boat at the harbour on Baltasay. He was on his way home after National Service. She was very small and frail, wrapped up in a big coat. She had plenty of money.