Air Ambulance
Page 12
The confession did not surprise Alison, but it caused her a small pang of envy. Not envy of Isobel in any paltry sense of the word, but because she would have given much at that moment for Isobel’s wonderful chance to serve him.
“I’m sure you would,” she answered. “Mrs. Pollock is the right sort of person for Garrisdale.”
He did not answer that, and she remembered that Margot had told her that so many nurses came and went on Heimra. It could not be entirely because of the loneliness. Was it, then, because of Margot herself?
Any girl who was young and gay and good looking would irk Margot beyond endurance because she would be jealous of her, and Fergus’ work would have to suffer to pander to a whim.
With Isobel it might be different, though. Her beauty was not the sort that immediately met the eye of the beholder, because it came from within, and, into the bargain, she was many years Margot’s senior. There would be no reason for the lovely invalid of Monkdyke to consider Isobel Pollock as a rival, yet Fergus had just been unstinting in his praise of his house-mother. This generous, plain woman who loved children was also his friend. Andrew came towards them as they reached the lodge.
“I know a poem about a bird!” he declared. “I’ve just learned it.” He had lost much of his former reticence in Alison’s presence, accepting her now as he did Fergus, as someone in whom he could trust and who would be unfailingly kind.
“Well,” Fergus encouraged, “let’s hear it. Learning is never wasted when it can bear repetition.”
“Here?” the child asked. “Out on the machar?”
“What better place could we find,” he uncle decided, “since you say it’s about a bird?”
Andrew continued to regard them solemnly for a split second before he put his small, thin hands behind his back and began:
‘ “Come out and see my fly my kite,
Because I’ve stuck some breadcrumbs on it,
And when it’s nearly out of sight,
A bird will come and ride upon it!”
It seemed as if the small slight body might burst with the effort he made, and suddenly Alison’s eyes were full of tears. She dared not look at Fergus as he took his nephew’s hand.
“That’s a new one,” he lied gallantly. “I’ve not heard it before. Who taught it to you? Mrs. Pollock?”
“Oh, no!” Andrew told him without hesitation. “Mrs. Pollock didn’t know it, either. It’s Captain Gowrie’s poem. His own special poem. He learned it when he was a boy like me.”
Alison could not hide her surprise, and when she looked round at Fergus she saw it reflected clearly on his smiling face.
“Well, now,” he said, “that’s something, isn’t it? Might I be allowed to ask how all this came about?”
The hot colour of painful embarrassment dyed Andrew’s puckered little face, but he admitted without hesitation.
“I went to visit him. Mrs. Pollock said I might, and I had a puddock to show him.”
“A puddock!” Fergus groaned. “Don’t tell me Mrs. Pollock approves of frogs in the best bedrooms!”
“She doesn’t mind,” Andrew assured him guilelessly. “So long as they don’t hop about too much and get lost under the furniture.”
“Or in the beds!” Fergus looked round to Alison. “I think you did mention that Isobel was the right sort of person for Garrisdale,” he said with a smile.
Their laughter rang out freely on the keen, salt air, and Andrew took Alison’s hand.
“Are you coming back to Garrisdale?” he asked eagerly.
“Not tonight, Andrew,” she said gently. “But tomorrow I shall be going with you to Heimra Mhor.”
She watched them walk away, a man and a small, handicapped boy between whom there existed the most complete understanding and all the time she was thinking of another man who had remembered from his own childhood a poem about a bird.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EARLY the following morning Andrew was knocking urgently on the door of the lodge.
“Mercy on us!” Mrs. Cameron exclaimed. “Who can that be at such an hour, and you not through your porridge yet!”
Alison smiled.
“I think I know the knock,” she said.
“Ay! And me, too,” Kirsty confessed, crossing hurriedly to the door but pretending complete surprise when she opened it to find Andrew’s small, anxious figure on the doorstep.
“I thought Alison mightn’t know about the tide,” he announced, waiting to be invited into the warm kitchen. “We’ve got to leave early.”
“She remembered all right, but she’s just having her breakfast,” Kirsty told him. “Are you going to come in and wait for her?”
Andrew doffed his bonnet and stepped shyly over the doorstep.
“Hullo!” said Alison. “I won’t be a minute. You’ve had your breakfast, I expect, Andrew?”
He nodded, his blue eyes shining.
“I’ve got on my new kilt,” Andrew announced, fit to burst with pride but a little disappointed, it would seem, that nobody had noticed the fact as soon as he came in.
“My, now!” exclaimed Kirsty, “I was wondering where the bonnie new kilt had come from.”
Andrew lifted his sporran to show more of the tartan.
“My Uncle Fergus bought it for me when he was in Glasgow that time I was having my tonsils out. He got it at Forsyth’s.”
At this point Dougal Cameron came in, and the new kilt had to be examined and praised all over again and a six pence slipped surreptitiously into the pocket on the back of the sporran.
“It’s my father’s sporran,” Andrew announced with pride. “I wasn’t big enough to have it before.”
Alison rose quickly from the table, her throat tight.
“I won’t keep you a minute, Andrew,” she promised, yet when she reached her own room she stood for a moment or two at the tiny dormer window gazing out over Heimra Beag and thinking about Gavin Blair, wondering what sort of father he would have made for Andrew, and thinking how different things might have been if he had lived.
When she took down her cloak from the hook behind the bedroom door her eyes were misty with unshed tears, but when she went out into the spring sunshine with Andrew by her side, she was smiling.
“Are we to go back to Garrisdale?” she asked him.
“Oh, no!” He was hobbling along by her side, the new kilt swinging above the pitifully thin little legs, the Balmoral bonnet with its red bobble and flying streamers framing the hauntingly pale little face like a jaunty halo. “We can go straight to the jetty. Sandy will be there with the launch.”
Sandy was there and waiting, his big shaggy head and red beard bristling as fiercely as ever in spite of all his efforts with a comb. As it was Sunday morning, he had dressed in his best suit, a clerical grey herringbone tweed, pressed and re-pressed over the years by Sandy himself, for he had never taken a wife.
“Women are all the same,” he had been heard to comment. “They do the things for you that you can well enough do for yourself, and you’ve to keep them for the rest of their lives and listen to them talking into the bargain!”
In spite of his occasional sourness, however, Andrew loved him. The blue eyes lit up as soon as he saw the old Highlander, who had been sailor, fisherman, ghillie and boatman during his varied career, and he was on board the launch before Alison had reached the end of the jetty.
“Good morning, Sandy,” she greeted the old man. “Are we going to have a smooth crossing?”
“If we get the tide,” he answered, the sea-blue eyes going beyond her to search the path to Garrisdale. “The others are late.”
“No! No, here comes Uncle Fergus!” Andrew shouted from the well of the launch. “We’ll be in time.”
Alison turned to see Fergus coming towards them, striding down across the young heather shoots with half a dozen of the older children in his wake. She held her breath thinking how magnificent he looked in his own kilt with his Balmoral at an angle almost as jaunty as Andrew’s, a
nd the tall shepherd’s crook, with its curly ramshorn handle, in his hand. He was so right for Heimra, so much a part of his background that even a stranger would have recognized him as belonging.
“Have I kept you waiting?” he asked apologetically. “Andrew insisted on going to fetch you, even though I told him that you weren’t likely to let us down.”
He smiled down into her eyes, and she thought how lovely the sun was and how calm Coirestruan could be in spite of its ugly reputation.
When they reached the other side Sandy moored the launch and prepared to follow them at a respectful distance to the kirk.
The children walked on ahead, chattering among themselves, and suddenly Alison was thinking what a family party they made. It was thus that the laird and his wife and family must have walked to the old grey kirk above the shore for generations, and nothing had really changed on Heimra in all these years.
The Kirk was set on a hill a little way apart from the cluster of houses which outlined the miniature harbour. It was built of the rose-pink granite quarried out of Heimra’s cliffs, and it seemed to glow like a living thing where the sun caught it. Its solid, square tower, rising above the tops of the pines, stood out sharply against the turquoise sky, and the bell which summoned the islanders to worship began to ring.
The steady, repetitive, peaceful sound echoed far and wide, a sound that Alison would carry away in her heart forever. Whatever might happen to her in the future, the kirk bell on Heimra would be one of her lasting memories.
As they approached the doorway other people were nearing the church, and she recognized Mrs. MacIver from the hotel.
“You’ll be coming over for something hot to drink after the service, Mr. Blair?” she asked. “You’ll all be needing it before you go back across Coirestruan.”
“The children look forward to it,” Fergus agreed as he stood aside to let her go through the gate before him. “And I dare say Miss Lang will be grateful for a cup of coffee.”
They were too near the church door for Alison to reply. The beadle and the minister were waiting for them, and as they shook hands and she dropped her offering into the wooden plate, she was aware of a glow and a warmth which she remembered from earliest childhood. When they had been very young her mother had taken her and her brother every Sunday morning to church on the island of Arran, where they had stayed for several years with an aunt who ran a small hotel. It had been like Heimra, peaceful and fresh, with no traffic on the road, and it had seemed then that the sun never ceased to shine. A childhood fancy, no doubt, but so like this golden day on Heimra that her heart was young again.
The service was short and simple. Fergus read the lesson, and came back afterwards to sit in the Garrisdale pew by her side, and the children sang lustily, if not always strictly in tune.
When it was time to go the benediction held a new meaning for her as she walked out into the sunshine ahead of the congregation by Fergus’ side.
They walked in silence until they came to the MacIver’s doorway, which stood hospitably open. Somehow, without their noticing, Janet MacIver had come on ahead.
Coffee and hot chocolate were ready for them in no time, and, before they left, Fergus offered to have a look at the repairs that had already been done.
“He thinks of everything!” Janet MacIver acknowledged with a smile in Alison’s direction. “We heard all about your accident, Miss Lang and about that nice young man who pilots the plane. We were hearing that he is badly hurt over yonder on the far side of Coirestruan.”
She paused for confirmation of the rumour, and Alison satisfied her quite natural curiosity as best she could.
“He has an injured skull and something wrong with his arm,” she explained. “But Mr. Blair feels now that it might not be quite so serious as he first suspected.”
“He’s a wonderful doctor, they say,” Mrs. MacIver reflected. “It’s a great pity he has such a cross to bear over there on Heimra Beag. Have you met young Mrs. Blair yet?”
“Yes.” Alison felt this could only be dangerous ground. Margot was not well liked on either island, it would seem. “I have had tea with her.”
“She would be looking to see if you were plain enough for her liking,” Janet MacIver said bluntly. “Even though she did know that you were fond of the young airman.”
Alison flushed scarlet.
“Mrs. MacIver!” she tried to laugh. “However did a story like that get about?”
Janet smiled as she collected the children’s cups.
“You’ve no idea how news gets about in small communities!” she declared. “My brother’s wife has a sister in Glasgow who has a daughter who works at your hospital. And besides, Rory Gowrie was born here.”
“But even so, there’s no truth in it!” Alison objected, painfully aware of her heightened colour and the small, nervous quiver in her voice. “I’m fond of Captain Gowrie—we’ve worked together quite a bit on the Air Ambulance—but there’s nothing else between us, Mrs. MacIver. I assure you.”
“Ah, well, as you say.” Incredulity was written large on Janet’s pleasant face. “If it’s not so, you’ll have to be heeding my warning about Garrisdale.”
Alison laughed, dismissing the subject with a shrug, although she was far from feeling indifferent.
“I won’t be here very much longer, Mrs. MacIver,” she said. “I shall be going back to the mainland quite soon.”
Janet MacIver looked beyond her through the half-open door.
“A pity,” she said, as Fergus’ voice came through to them from the direction of the kitchen. “A great pity. Mr. Blair could be doing with someone like yourself on Heimra Beag, I’m thinking.”
Alison did not know what to say to that.
“He has quite a lot of help,” she pointed out. “Mrs. Pollock runs Garrisdale admirably and there’s Hannah at Monkdyke—”
“Ay, poor Hannah!” Janet exclaimed. “She’s chained to Margot Blair with a peculiar sort of loyalty that neither you nor me might be able to understand. She was her foster-mother.”
“Oh!” Alison sounded aghast, for Margot had treated Hannah like a servant. “I had no idea.”
“It’s true enough. Hannah brought her up,” Janet said indignantly. “But when she married Gavin Blair, Margot Holmes would have none of her humble origin. It was only when she needed help, when she wanted someone who would put up with her tantrums, that she sent for Hannah. She’s been there ever since.”
The faithful watchdog, Alison thought. The ever-willing slave! She felt thankful when Fergus came back into the room, for this final revelation about Margot Blair seemed to have tarnished her golden day.
Try as she would, she could not forget about Hannah and Margot and their surprising relationship. It meant, of course, that Hannah would go to any lengths to serve the girl she had nurtured in childhood. To any lengths!
When they had all climbed on board the launch again, Sandy steered it towards the open sea.
“We’re going round the other way,” Fergus explained, “to show you the north end of Heimra Beag and to let the children see the birds. On a calm day we always do it as a special sort of treat.” He sat down in the deep well beside Alison, and the launch streaked away across the sound, leaving a white froth of wake behind it in an ever-widening arrowhead until they reached the southern buttress of Heimra Beag and were beyond it on the wide Atlantic swell.
All along the coast they came level with little bays of pure white sand where Alison longed to land. They would have been an enchantment and a lure at any time, but today, as she saw them for the first time with Fergus by her side, they were all that and more. He named them for her with an amused half smile curving his mouth, pointing out the haunts of the seals and a row of porpoise fins breaking the surface just ahead of them.
He had come near to do that, leaning close, and once again she smelt the scent of a good tobacco as she had done that morning when he had put his coat about her shoulders for protection against the elements.
“Rudha nan Gael,” he said, pointing to a savage face of red gneiss ahead of them. “The Point of the Stranger!” He mused over the translation for a moment. “It seems a very long time since you came to Heimra, Alison.”
“It does to me, too,” she was forced to confess. “Perhaps islands are like that. They claim one very quickly. Or so Ronald says!”
He leaned back, fumbling in his pocket for his pipe, and when he had lit it he seemed to have withdrawn again to a safer distance of friendship. The old remoteness was there, like a visor drawn down over his handsome face, and she gazed up at Rudha nan Gael, thinking that it was indeed his home.
On this rugged northern bastion of the island nothing could alight but the great sea-birds, their powerful wings thrashing the air till they found a foothold, and she watched them in fascinated silence as the launch sped past, so near to the cliff face that she could have stretched out her hand and touched it.
Then, with a suddenness which almost took her breath away, they were back in the sun again, sailing round a smiling green headland into a sheltered bay.
“There’s Monkdyke!” one of the children cried. “Over there beside the trees!”
All the colour fled out of Alison’s cheeks. Somehow she had not quite expected this. Yet, if she had given their voyage a moment’s thought, she would have realized that their return to Monkdyke’s secluded bay was inevitable. They had come right round the island.
The launch was still fairly close inshore, and, as they sailed across the shallow bay, the house came into full view. The windows behind the terrace were open, the gaudy golf umbrella was up, and Margot sat beneath it in a yellow dress.
They were so near that her features were almost visible and she must have seen the launch, yet she made no sign. She sat curiously upright, her hands on the arms of her wicker chair, her knees still covered by the tartan rug, and her head bent a little, as if she were reading. Yet there was no book in sight.