by Su Bristow
They left a great quiet behind them, and no-one seemed inclined to talk much, watching where they put their feet in their newly polished boots. Where the path rounded the hill and the harbour came into view, Hugh stopped, gazing out to sea.
He cleared his throat. Donald was expecting some last-minute words of advice or wisdom, but, ‘It’s a fair day for fishing,’ was all that Hugh said.
‘There’s no-one out today,’ said Rennie. ‘Folks have other things on their minds.’
He nudged Donald. ‘Still time to take to the heather!’
‘Get away with you, man,’ said James. ‘You could do worse than go courting yourself.’ He winked at Donald.
‘Aye, see where that leaves you. In the family way before you know it, and no peace to be had unless it’s out on the water!’ He dodged as James aimed a mock blow at him. ‘Nothing but trouble, women, eh?’
Hugh turned, then, and looked at them, or beyond them at another horizon. ‘Trouble’s what life’s all about,’ he said. ‘It’s a poor thing, to be a man alone, without family. And Donald’s made his choice, now.’
‘Aye, and he won’t be much good to his new bride if we stand around in this wind much longer! We’d best be moving.’ James took Donald’s arm. ‘Wait now, I’ll give you a hand over the steep bit here.’
At least, this morning, they did not have to make their way through the village again. In any case, anyone who could walk would be inside the church by now, except for a few children keeping watch in the yard. Everyone was here but Mairhi’s own family, thought Donald. Where would they be today? Wherever he went, unless it was far enough inland, he was always looking out for them these days. There were a few now, down on the bit of beach below the headland where the church stood; but they paid no attention as the men went by on the path above. It seemed there would be no last-minute rescue; another thought to be laid aside.
He had not been able to see beyond this day, had thought it would somehow change everything; but here they were, making their way now through the churchyard and around to the door, and each step of the way seemed plain and simple. This is the way of it, and this, and this. How else could it be? Children darted and swooped around them, some waving green branches that their elders had cut for them. The trees were barely in leaf so early in the year, but they had done what they could. And here in the porch was Auntie Annie, waiting to greet them. She reached up to kiss him and into his buttonhole she tucked a small posy of flowers. ‘Sweet violets,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘I’ve some for Mairhi, too. I know where to find them!’
‘Thanks, Auntie,’ he whispered back.
‘You do right by that lass, Donald,’ she said suddenly, fiercely. Her eyes glittered with tears. ‘Don’t you mind that lot in there. You make your promises, and you keep them!’
Donald stood very still. Almost, it seemed that she could hear what he was thinking. He looked straight back at her. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said.
She nodded, once, and let go of his arm. He was aware again of Hugh at his shoulder and of the doorway in front of them. Inside, most of the people he knew in the world were waiting. He straightened up and stepped forward.
29
He had never, of his own free will, walked into such a great crowd of people. Even going to school, when there was no getting out of it, he would lurk by the wall of the yard and try to slip in behind some others. But now he was the reason they were all gathered here. It seemed that all eyes were on him; some smiling and nodding as he and Hugh made their way to the front, and others simply watching. Not all eyes, though. Andrew Bain stood square-shouldered by the nave and never moved as Donald passed by. Beyond him, Euan looked round, lifted an eyebrow and smiled a little. Aly, hunched at the far end, reached out to haul one of the children back as he slid off the seat, and kept his eyes down. There was no time to notice more. Donald was at the front now, facing the altar, and he could feel their stares like a swarm of ants on his back.
Hugh laid a steadying hand on his arm, and together they stood, listening to the whispering and rustling behind them; and beyond that, the everlasting sigh and crash of the sea on the rocks below, the blows of the wind against the church walls, and the light patter of rain on the windows. It seemed they might stand that way forever, but at last the doors creaked open again, the people fell silent, and sunshine streamed in. Donald took a deep breath and turned to meet his bride.
He could hardly see her at first against the sun, veiled as she was, and so small – small as a fairy’s child, indeed. As she came up the aisle on the arm of John Rennie, Donald fixed his eyes upon her hand, warm and human where it rested on John’s sleeve. Then she was at his side. Her head scarcely came up to his shoulder as they stood there, side by side, and made their vows before God. No-one spoke, no-one made any objection, no sudden thunderclap sounded to stop the ceremony. There was no sound at all, and the only movement was made by Mairhi herself, as she dipped her head to indicate, Yes, I do.
When the moment came, his hands shook as he went to lift the veil. Her dark eyes looked straight into his, just as they had done on that other night not so long ago, and it came to him that this was the first time since then that he had met her gaze fully. But this time there was no terror, no nightmare visions of drowned hope; just a steady look that they held for a minute, and then her hand in his as they turned to face the waiting crowd.
And that was that. The rest of the day unfolded with feasting and dancing and speeches, and everyone to be greeted and all the things that must be done. Donald went through it all as though he were at sea, in the sudden windless calm that had fallen upon him when their eyes met. Nothing was changed, and yet nothing could be the same.
The stillness lasted until they were at home at last, putting off their fine clothes and getting ready for bed. Donald now would sleep with Mairhi, in the bed where he had been conceived and born. Bridie would take her place in the bed by the hearth, which had been his since he was a child. When he came into the bedroom, Mairhi looked at him in surprise. He went to her and took her hands, and spoke out of the shining stillness within him.
‘We sleep together now, lass. That’s what it means, to be man and wife. Well, part of what it means, anyway. But I promise you I’ll never touch you against your will. I did you wrong, and I’m sorry for it. I’ll try to make it up to you and be a good husband, as best I can. Do you understand me at all?’ He could not look at her now, or only at her bare feet on the floor. Her toes were red and pinched together from wearing shoes that did not fit well. The stillness wavered, and wretchedness rose inside him. Then he felt the soft touch of her hand against his cheek. ‘She eases me,’ his aunt had said, and now he knew what she had meant. He could not speak. They stood there for a moment, and then Mairhi stepped away and bent to blow out the candle.
30
‘And see here, this is the wing feather of an eagle. Likely he lost it scrapping over that dead lamb we saw just now; there’s been foxes there too. I’ll show you one of their homes in a while.’
They were making their way up the rising ground, away from the sea, along a sheep’s path that meandered across the slope between the heather and tussocks of marsh grass. Sheep with live lambs scrambled out of their way. Donald wanted Mairhi to see the pine and birch woods that grew under the lea of the crags. He wanted her to see everything, to come to know the land as intimately as he did himself. Catriona was right, he thought; it seemed he could not stop talking these days, the words welling up out of him, trying to catch up with all the years of silence. And there was so much to tell, so much to show, so much he had never shared with anyone.
There was another thing – something he had never put into words, even to himself. Here in the woods, or up in the hills, away from people with their questions and their judgments, he was at ease – no, more than that. He was happy, alive in a way that no-one, except maybe his mother now and again, had ever seen; and now he found that he could share that happiness with Mairhi. She did not judge –
or not that he knew – and she seemed as full of wonder as himself, following the tracks of deer or marten, seeing the many colours of the land birds, the landscape, the smells and sounds and solid ground beneath their feet. And there was the core of it, the secret thing. His deepest solace lay here, out of the sight and sound of the sea.
There was nothing to be done about it, of course. Donald sometimes thought that he hated the sea. He feared it, that was for sure; Aly Bain was right about that. It had taken his father and many another good man, and its gifts were capricious – never to be relied on, often too little and then suddenly far too much. There was no tenderness in the life of a fisherman; it was all wrenching and heaving and the sharp work with blood and knives, and then being spat out at the end of a voyage, cold and wet, bruised and stinking. Once, watching his mother tend to a newborn calf, cleaning its muzzle and helping it to suck, he had asked her, ‘Why did you stay here?’ She had glanced at him, busy about her work, and when the task was done she faced him and said, ‘You asked me that once before, when you were nine years old, after your father died. Do you remember?’
He’d shifted, looked away. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well, you did. And I gave you a child’s answer; that our family was here, that John would have wanted us to carry on the croft, for you to learn the fishing, all that. But I’ll tell you the true reason now, if you like.’
He’d felt like a child then, not wanting another answer, but it was too late to turn back. ‘Well, what is it?’
‘Pride.’ She’d laughed, then. ‘I was a proud young woman, Donald, and I would not turn tail and go back to my folks inland. They told me it would come to grief, that even if John prospered, it would always be waiting and fearing, and him away and gone more often than not, and me managing alone. And they were right, of course. After John was lost, my father came to fetch me home. You were old enough to work on the farm, he said, and they wouldn’t see us go hungry. But I wouldn’t go, to face their pity and their always knowing better. I wouldn’t go and live with your Uncle Hugh’s family either, though they offered, bless them.
‘So we stayed here, you and I, and I made myself useful with my medicines and so on, and I made them accept me, after a fashion. And the thing is, Donald, I’ll never know if it was the best way or not, do you see? You choose your path, and then you have to walk it, all the way. We all do.’
She’d turned away then, still proud, and Donald had taken himself off, not knowing what to do with what she’d just given him. He still didn’t know.
Mairhi was tugging at his arm. They were approaching a tall pine, and there was movement on the ground at its feet, a ripple of bright colour as the squirrels flowed up the trunk to safety. She ran to the tree, pressing her hands to the bark and peering up into its branches, as though she might follow them aloft. One of them fled, leaping across to the next tree with scarcely a pause, but the other stayed to scold at her. Mairhi listened, and then gave him back his own words, churring and rattling, accompanied by a shake of the finger that she’d learned from the little girls at the shieling.
Donald stood back and watched. She did that a lot, these days. Ever since the gull-call in the priest’s parlour, she would try out the sound of every creature she came across. Donald had tried to teach her not to do it in front of other people, but Kirsty had wasted no time in spreading the story, and now whenever they went to the village the children would be after them, with all the animal noises they could think of, screeching and yammering.
They kept their distance, though. Once, one of the smaller ones had fallen as he tried to scramble away. He’d hurt his knee and set up a downright human bawl, but when Mairhi went to him and tried to set him to rights, he’d fought her off and fled in terror. These days, they avoided the village when they could. Days like today were a pure gift, just for the two of them. Donald took a deep breath and came back again to the present.
‘Squirrels,’ he said, coming up to her. ‘They come out for a bit in the mild weather, to see what they can find. See here.’ He hunted about under the scrubby hazels and alders near by, and held out a handful of last year’s nuts. ‘Here’s a good one.’ Just a shell, blackened by frost and wet, with a neat round hole, and all the meat gone. ‘They’ve sharp, strong teeth, to get through the shell like that.’ She gave a little nod, putting the thought away somewhere in her collection of treasures, to be taken out and examined again later.
‘Mairhi, why won’t you speak? You understand me well, you can make any sound you like. You’ll nod and shake your head and use your hands to talk, but you won’t speak. I wish you’d talk to me.’ He had not meant to say any of that, but the yearning in him was so close, so constant, it would well up without warning. He took her hand now, and she did not pull away, only looked at him steadily. ‘I think you could, if you chose. I’m sorry, I won’t say any more. It’s your choice, and I’ll abide by it.’
For a moment longer, neither of them moved. She opened her mouth, seemed almost about to say something, and then her eye was caught by a flash of movement overhead, and she turned away to follow the small birds as they flew out over the heather. Then back to him, eyebrows raised. And the knowledge came to him in sudden wonder: She’s teaching me. She’s teaching me to read people. And if she did use words, I’d miss it, like I always did before. He had no idea if that was her intention, but this time he would not ask. Aloud he said, ‘Sand martins. They’re early, too. Maybe it means a good year.’ But she was off and away, running through the heather, dipping and weaving like the martins above her, arms held wide. Sometimes the lithe grace of her struck him speechless; even now, with the child growing daily, visibly, she moved like water. And another thought came to him: I have given her this. She’d have had a few hours at most, and then it would be back into the thick, heavy skin that seals must wear to live as they do. These clever hands, this lovely voice, this body that can jump and dance and feel; maybe they make up, just a little, for what she’s lost. And then she was down suddenly, disappearing into the bracken with a cry of surprise.
He made his way over to her, still a little slow, to find her flat on her back, laughing at the sky, arms and legs spread wide. The yearning swept through him; to fling himself down beside her, take her in his arms, give way to that brief, fierce pleasure. He stood quite still, a little turned away, mastering himself, and then stooped to give her his hand, saying in a voice that was almost steady, ‘See what happens when you forget to hold up your skirts? You can’t have both wings and hands; now that’s just greedy. Should have been a bird instead, maybe.’ But then, for all he knew, they could be birds at times, or whatever they chose. What if it was only his action that had trapped her in this one form?
Shame welled up in him. And yet, on this bright spring day, surely she was happy to be here, walking the land at his side? He dared not ask her, for fear of the wrong answer; but even as he thought it she swung his hand and let go, spinning around and around, the way the little girls did, until she tumbled down again – on purpose this time. And that’s all the answer you’re getting, he told himself, so take it and be grateful.
31
That was one of a string of stolen days, taken here and there from the pile of ordinary stones and made into a shining, secret necklace. Donald imagined Mairhi wearing it against her heart, known to no-one but himself, like the growing hoard of special stones and other curious objects that he found for her on their rambles. She kept them on a windowsill in the cottage; all but the carved seal given to her by the priest. That she had always by her, in a pocket, and often she would take it out, to stroke or simply to hold, while her attention was seemingly elsewhere. Once, coming in unexpectedly, Donald had heard her singing to it, a strange, crooning, wordless song that drifted like the wind. She’d stopped when she saw him, but he’d simply nodded to her and carried on about his business.
All of it was precious to him: these days; her strangeness; her ordinariness; the way she teased him sometimes; the way she nestled against h
im in the cold of the night. And then, day by day, the way the growing child came between them. ‘It’ll be born around midsummer; nine months, like any other child,’ Bridie had said. ‘She won’t wait until autumn, the way the seals do. That’s a good sign, Donald.’ He thought she spoke to convince herself as much as him, though neither of them could bear to speak directly of what they dreaded. But in any case, for Donald, midsummer was much too soon. He tried to put it out of mind, to make the most of the time they had.
It was little enough. As the days lengthened, he was out on the boat more and more with his Uncle Hugh, sometimes for two or three days at a stretch.
Bridie took Mairhi about with her on her daily rounds, doing the things that women did. ‘If they see her every day,’ she said, ‘they can’t help seeing there’s no harm in her. And believe you me, Donald, it’s the women who’ll have the last say. Besides, she’s a real help to me now. She’s learning the medicines, and she knows how to be with someone who’s ailing.’ It was true; Donald had seen her with little Jeannie when she took the fever. He knew, though, that, while Mairhi would sit for hours by a sickbed, she would not sew or weave with the other women for more than a few minutes. ‘She’ll come to it, in time,’ Bridie said, but how much more time would there be?
Around May, when there were still no fresh spring greens to be had, Jessie Bain was taken ill. Her belly was huge by then, and the rest of her shrunken and yellow like the last of the winter apples, as though the child was taking all the life from her. The older children hung about until other families took pity on them, and Aly spent all his time in the bar when he was ashore. Bridie did not expect to be called, of course, but one afternoon when Donald was in the kailyard, turning in manure for the new year’s vegetables, Euan’s wife Shona came past him, ignoring his greeting, and going straight into the house without stopping to knock. He drove his fork into the earth and followed her. Bridie and Mairhi, sorting turnips dug from the clamp, looked up in surprise.