A chunky key, attached with twine to a small piece of wood, is hurled in Father’s direction.
“Er … tapadh leibh…” Father thanks him, speaking in Gaelic in the surprise of the moment.
The man pauses, frowns, then says, “Cò as a thàinig sibh?”
A smile breaks over Father’s face when he hears the storekeeper speak in his own tongue, asking where we have come from. Father no doubt sees the glimmer of the invisible thread again, and will think it another good omen for us.
“We’re from the Highlands … from the island of Tornish,” Father replies to the question.
“Tornish? Never heard of it,” the man says with a disinterested shrug.
“Ah, it’s a small place, I suppose,” Father carries on regardless, hiding his disappointment with a broad smile. “Though we have been in Glasgow and then New York of late. Mr Gillespie sent word to his brother in New York that he was looking for a reliable person to look after his place before he comes back in spring…”
Mr Nathaniel does not answer, does not listen I suspect. For he is now too busy sneering at a girl I had not noticed before. She comes quietly out of the shadows, cradling a bundle of candles. Her skin is a rich brown, her hair black like mine but tied into two short, thick braids while my own hangs loose and messy down my back, escaping as it always does from tying.
“And where is it you’re from?” Father asks the storekeeper, trying to gain his attention once more.
“From Wisconsin – but my mother was Scottish, from Inverness. She taught me some Gaelic,” he answers in a bored voice, his gaze on the girl’s hand as it reaches out to him, coins nestled in the soft pink of her palm.
Like a striking snake, Mr Nathaniel grabs the girl by her wrist. I watch in shock as he twists it sharply to the right, causing the coins to spill on the counter. Then he lets go, and with an equally sharp push of her hand, he nods at the door.
“Off you go!” he bellows in English, when she does not move.
I feel Lachlan do something he never does any more; he reaches for my hand.
“Sir, I’m expected to bring home change…” the girl says softly.
“Are you now,” says the scarred man. “Pity there’s none coming.”
“But my master will—”
“GO!”
With her head bowed, the girl pulls her shawl about her and hurries away, the heavy door of the store creaking behind her.
Father, so very happy a moment ago, stands with his mouth hanging a little open, startled that the storekeeper has treated this girl so harshly. The good omen he hoped for? It was not to be, it seems.
But before he can think what to say, Mr Nathaniel turns to me.
“And what are you staring at, missy? My face frightens you, does it?” he asks.
He is quite the fool if he thinks it is his face rather than his manner that have caused me to glower at him. And he has accused quite the wrong person of judging a scar or some other difference.
“Now, now,” I hear Father say in the soft but firm voice he would use back on Tornish, as an elder who would seek to soften hardened feelings between neighbours with a grudge against each other.
But I do not need or heed Father’s gentle words. My hackles are risen like that dog’s outside when he set eyes on Mr Nathaniel’s son.
“Why would your face frighten me, sir?” I say as boldly as I can, letting go of Lachlan’s hand so that I can rest both of mine on the counter. Now the storekeeper can see quite clearly that I have differences of my own. And in that moment, I think of our family friend Caroline back in Scotland – the woman hidden under black mourning clothes – who was scarred with burns from a house fire and yet was one of the kindest, most beautiful people I have ever met.
“Urgh…” comes a small sound of disgust from the storekeeper’s son as he gazes upon my weaker, withered hand. I think I would expect nothing less of him and do not bother to look his way. It is the storekeeper himself who I dare to glare at.
I watch him glance down at my mismatching hands resting on the counter, but the sight of them does not seem to soften him. Instead he lifts his eyes to Father and says, “Quite the little vixen, isn’t she?”
Father’s face darkens, but any words he plans to say are interrupted by the door being flung open.
“Mr Nathaniel!” calls out the smartly dressed man with the shock of white-blond hair that I saw back at the harbourside. “We have a problem.”
“And what might that be, Mr Eriksson? Did the new doctor not arrive?” asks the storekeeper, folding his arms across the waistcoat that struggles to stretch over his rounded stomach. “I told you you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone to take the job. You might be the mine manager but you’re no miracle worker…”
“Thank you, but I have arrived, and I have taken the job, with no miracle required,” a voice says, and into the store strides the tall woman from the ship, shaking snow from the shoulders of her very mannish-looking coat. “My name is Dr Stephanie Spicer.”
I think it’s fair to say that everyone’s jaw has dropped, except for this Mr Eriksson, who is clenching his own jaws so tightly I worry it’ll be a dentist he’ll need next.
“Is there such a thing as a woman doctor?” Lachlan asks in wonder.
“There are certainly a few of us. I trained at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania,” the woman replies smartly. “I have just shown Mr Eriksson my certificate of qualification. Would you like to see it too, young man?”
“Um … no,” Lachlan says shyly, shuffling closer to me.
“A woman doctor?” Mr Nathaniel grumbles, as if he can’t quite believe what his one good eye is seeing. “No, no, no. As if this place can get any more damned…”
“Damned!” Charlie gleefully repeats the swearword.
Another swift clip around the head shushes the boy once more.
“Ow! But you said it first!”
“Shut up – or I’ve got another one of those for ya!” the storekeeper orders his son, his hand held threateningly in the air.
In the accompanying stunned silence, Dr Spicer jumps in with a query.
“How did you lose your eye, Mr Nathaniel?” she asks, obviously more interested in medical matters than introductions and small talk. “In some kind of a mining accident, I suppose?”
She has walked over to the counter and firmly placed a large, black, medical-looking bag on it, as if to assert herself.
“That’s none of your business!” he roars. “A woman will be no doctor to me. And none of the folk of the town will come to see you either, I’ll tell you that now. A woman doctor … it’s unnatural!”
In the midst of the raised voices, I start to feel strange, still swaying from the journey, dizzy from bewilderment at the situation we have found ourselves in. I glance at Father, who gives me a nod, letting me know we shall be on our way just as soon as he can ask about the supplies we’ll need.
“Yes, but you’ll still have her board in your rooms at the back, as we agreed?” the mine manager asks the storekeeper.
“You expect me to stay here?” Dr Spicer bursts out. “In what I suspect is a drinking den?”
I see her gaze at the long bench against the wall, at the barrel of liquor or beer that sits at the end of the counter.
“Ha! You will not be lodging here, madam, unless it’s your wish to settle with four miners, myself and young Charlie.”
“No, thank you. Isn’t there a hotel or boarding house in town?” Dr Spicer turns and asks of the mine manager.
“The mining company have set up cabins for workers with families, as well as a dormitory building for the single men,” Mr Eriksson replies with a frustrated flare of his nostrils. “There is nowhere else…”
“Except your home, Mr Eriksson,” says the storekeeper, leaning his arms on the counter. “You surely have more than enough rooms in that fine house of yours.”
“Now that’s just not possible,” says Mr Eriksson, waving his hand in a firm refusal. “
Not with my wife … the way she is. We can’t have any disturbances.”
“Oh, and what seems to be the problem with your wife?” asks Dr Spicer, her eyes like the persistent stare of a great horned owl behind her glasses.
Any answer given is lost to an awful sound – a sudden, muffled boom.
The deep, terrible rumble of it; I feel the very ground ripple and move beneath my feet! And the shock of it seems to set off a sudden volley of coughing that consumes me, leaving barely room to draw breath.
The concerned face of Dr Spicer is the last thing I see before stars white as the snow outside whirl before my eyes – and all becomes dark.
“O nam faicinn thu a’ tighinn,
Ruithinn dhol nad chòdhail,
Ach mur tig thu ’n seo gam shireadh,
Ciamar thilleas dochas?
If I saw you coming,
I would run to meet you,
But if you don’t come here to search for me,
How can hope return?”
When I open my eyes again, I am uncertain where I am, or why the words to “The Fairy Love Song” are ringing around in my head. I know only that something smells good.
For a moment, my heart surges, and think myself back in our fine stone cottage on Tornish. For Father is playing his tin whistle and a pot bubbles and hisses somewhere about the room.
“Ishbel? Effie?” I say, pushing myself up from some kind of bed that I find myself resting on, a tangle of rough blankets covering me.
“Father, she’s awake!” says Lachlan, staring at me, a halo of gold around his scruffy tufts of red hair.
The music of the whistle stills. And now Father rushes over, dropping to his knees on the floor beside me. “You are with us again at last, my Bridie?”
“What a fever you have had,” Lachlan tells me excitedly. “You’ve been tossing and turning in a terrible, restless sleep for more than a week!”
“I-I remember a sound … and the ground moved,” I mutter.
“Oh, that was just an explosion!” says Lachlan, seeming so oddly light-hearted in his reply.
“An explosion?” I croak in my new-found, uncertain voice.
“It’s all right; the miners set them off in the tunnels underground – to shake free rocks and find more seams of copper,” my brother says matter-of-factly. “It happens every now and then. My friends say that you get used to it.”
I blink at my brother, barely believing that could be possible.
“Now then, we made up a bed for you here, Bridie, so that we could easily watch over you,” says Father, changing the subject as he gently lays a hand on my forehead. He smiles when he takes it away, clearly pleased with how he finds me.
“You’re in the parlour, Bridie,” says my brother, perhaps aware that I have no sense of where I am exactly. “And there are two small bedrooms through the back there, and the storefront is through that door. The privy is round the back, of course!”
“Slow down, Lachlan – your sister has only just opened her eyes,” says Father, and I feel him take one of my hands and enclose it between his own work-roughened palms.
Still, I turn my head to the left to see one closed door, made of simple planks of wood, which must lead through to the storefront. I cannot focus my muddled mind on what the store might be exactly, but we seem to be in the living quarters behind it.
When I turn back to the kind and concerned faces of my brother and father, I notice behind them a window with a view of gently falling snowflakes, like a lace curtain that obscures any other view. Then there’s a table and chairs, a stove, some shelves set with useful cooking things and some daintier things, and an embroidered picture pinned to the wall.
Lachlan notices where my gaze settles.
“Look – I put Mother’s china dogs and good candlesticks and clock on the shelf there, along with Samuel’s drawings. That one of you; you were at the top of the Glas Crags. Do you remember the Glas Crags? The rocky hill on Tornish? Do you?”
Lachlan’s words; they run as if they were in a race. I focus my eyes on the framed picture my chattering brother points at – and there I am, sitting on a large stone, long, black hair flying free in the wind, my gaze off to the west. Glas Crags, Tornish, Samuel – snatches of these names almost make sense, but I still don’t know quite where I am and what is what.
“Ist, now, Lachlan,” says Father, using the Gaelic word to try to quieten my excitable brother. “Let Bridie be.”
“But so much has happened!” Lachlan continues like a puppy fussing over a fresh bone. “We were very worried for you because Dr Spicer said you had bronchitis, as well as the fever. But she has made you better, with poultices for your chest.”
I look down below the neck of my nightdress and see there is some padded cloth wrapped around me, and a mix of strong smells that I cannot quite place.
“And Easter brought you chicken broth every day, and Father and I fed you a little on a spoon at a time, though you did not properly wake. It helped make you well again, didn’t it? Do you want some more now? I can get some for you!”
“Lachlan…” Father says with a gentle warning in his voice as he helps me sit up on the makeshift bed.
“Oh, and it barely stops snowing here in Hawk’s Point.” Lachlan chatters on regardless. “But I have got to know some of the children at the miners’ camp… I have made friends with two German girls, Henni and Matilde. And I have a job, cleaning at the canteen and running errands for the workers.”
“That’s when he hasn’t been here, helping look after you, Bridie,” Father tells me. “He really has been a good lad and a good brother to you.”
“Yes! I’ve been here when Father’s been out talking to Mr Eriksson – he’s to carry on the building work Mr Gillespie had started around the town. So we will be quite rich, even with the amount Mr Nathaniel charges at his store! And then, of course, there’s the money Dr Spicer is paying us for rent…”
“Don’t you listen to him, Bridie! We will have a good income but we won’t be rich,” says Father with a smile in his voice.
But I hardly hear what he says as my mind rattles with yet more names I’ve just heard: Mr Gillespie, Mr Eriksson, Mr Nathaniel, Dr Spicer… Who are all these people?
“Never mind money. How are you feeling, m’ eudail?” Father asks me, tilting his head as he studies me, love and concern in his brown-eyed gaze.
But my mind is in the grip of a whirlwind, struggling to still and steady the ever-shifting names and faces coming into sharp focus and fluttering away again like gulls rising off the sea…
“I cannot be lying about here.” I suddenly sit bolt upright and try to throw off the blankets. “There must be so much to do!”
“Quiet, now,” Father says soothingly, gently pushing me back down on to the bed. “It’ll be a while till you feel yourself, till you’re strong again.”
“But I am always strong!” I insist, trying to push myself straighter still, as a muddle of memories thrust and shove their way forward. “Did I not always beat Will when we raced to the top of the Glas Crags? And … and was I not strong when the new Laird was going to set the law on you and we had to flee from Tornish? And I was certainly strong the time I hid Lachlan from the police in Glasgow the day that…”
Father is still holding my arms but his expression is most peculiar. He appears embarrassed. His eyes seem set on something to the side of me.
“Bridie,” Lachlan starts up again, as a woman’s frowning face moves into view. “Do you remember Dr Spicer? She is lodging with us till Father can build her dispensary.”
I freeze as I recognise the earnest, bespectacled woman from the steamship. Of course … I do remember her, and a store we were in and some angry men jabbering about her.
“Your daughter is clearly still a little confused because of her fever,” says Dr Spicer, seeming not to suspect that I was actually speaking the truth just now. “I’ll go and make up a fresh poultice.”
“And perhaps some coffee would be goo
d,” Father says quickly, rushing away before the doctor can see his flushed face. “I’ll fetch fresh water from the barrel outside.”
Dr Spicer hurries into one of the back rooms, shutting the door behind her, while Father opens a side door I have not noticed behind me, closing it to keep out the frost-edged air that tries to bluster its way in. And now left alone, my brother and I stare at each other.
“Bridie! You nearly told!” Lachlan hisses.
“Shh… I know!” I say back.
There is a Gaelic saying – “Cha sgeul-rùin e ’s fios aig triùir air” – that means “It’s not a secret if three people know it”. But Father, Lachlan and I have managed very well these past two years to keep those darker secret things to ourselves, so I feel terrible for starting to say them out loud.
And yet … before I know it, my brother and I begin snickering, covering our mouths to stifle the noise. The effort of shushing the hiccupping, helpless laughter hurts my chest, but it is still wonderful to be silly when all has been so serious lately.
When our silliness ebbs away, I am a little steadier, a little more like my old self. And my old self knows that while I can take a moment to look fondly over my shoulder to the past, I must take a longer, steadier look to the future.
“So, what do you make of Hawk’s Point, Lachlan?” I ask my brother, as I rest back against my pillows.
“I like it well enough. I’m earning money so that, when I am older and the war is over, I can go back to New York and work in a grand hotel.”
A smile stays on my face, but a stab of sadness twinges in my chest as I think of our shrunken family shrinking any further.
“But you know people aren’t happy here in town,” he carries on. “Everyone is worried that the mine will fail before it has started. Easter says that the mine manager and Mr Nathaniel from the general store are always griping together about the lack of copper being dug out.”
Easter – that name again. I’m about to ask who this Easter is when Lachlan leans forward with a grin and says the most peculiar thing.
Little Bird Lands Page 3