I tried to soften the blow but I failed dismally. It might even have been less painful for him if I’d just packed my bags and buggered off with no explanation, as Rory did. But instead I tried to explain (without actually telling the truth). I tried to thank him for what we’d had. But he just glowered at me - looking remarkably like his father - and said, ‘There’s someone else, isn’t there?’ And, without thinking, I said, ‘There always was.’
It wasn’t a good thing to say. As soon as I’d said the words, seen the look of shock on his face, of incomprehension, I remembered the night Hugh told me he’d always loved Rory. I understood Colin’s anger.
He wasn’t just angry, he was incandescent. (The thing about rowing with an actor is that it goes on and on. They don’t get tired of shouting, their voice never gives out and they have no concept of over-reaction.) It was horrible and noisy. Eventually the neighbours banged on the wall. Colin stormed out of the house and I packed a large suitcase with most of my clothes and a few of my possessions. With disturbing prescience, I left him a note telling him to donate the rest of my stuff to the Salvation Army. I took a taxi to Euston where I caught the sleeper to Inverness.
I never saw Colin again, except once, very briefly, on Waterloo Bridge. I don’t think he recognised me. I hope he didn’t, for his sake.
I wish he could have known that we’d never stood a chance; that Rory had always been there, would always be there; that I simply didn’t exist independently, I came as part of a package.
Buy one, get one free.
2000
Flora leaned against the wall of the telephone kiosk. Trying to steady her shaking hands she unfolded a dirty scrap of paper. It had been folded and re-folded so many times, it tore as she opened it. She keyed a number and waited. When a voice finally answered she was so startled she dropped one of the coins she was holding. Pressing the receiver hard against one ear, she put a hand over the other in an attempt to shut out traffic noise.
The voice spoke again. Flora’s throat tightened at the sound. She opened her mouth but no words came.
‘Hello?’ The voice sounded irritated now. ‘Is anyone there?’
Flora’s knees gave way and she slid slowly down the wall of the kiosk until she was sitting on the floor amidst litter and cigarette stubs, her knees under her chin.
‘Who is this?’
She clapped her hand to her mouth and began to sob, still holding the receiver to her ear.
‘Flora.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Flora - is that you?’
She nodded, her throat constricted, her eyes blind.
‘Flora - answer me! Tell me where you are!’ Rory paused but there was no reply. ‘Flor, speak to me! Tell me where you are, just speak, say anything, tell me it’s you! Flora, please. Come home!’ As his voice began to break, Flora buried the receiver in her lap, swaddled it in the many layers of her filthy clothing and howled like a stricken animal.
I woke up in the far north of Scotland, to the sound of a stranger snoring in the berth above me. I went out into the sleeper corridor and watched the desolate moorland speeding by. Torrential rain did nothing to dampen my spirits. The sky and light were unmistakably Highland; my lungs were already expanding at the prospect of clean, delicious air. And Rory and I would soon be together again. Like it used to be. At Tigh na Mara.
The house by the sea.
1952
‘Are we nearly there?’
‘No, darling.’ Dora tidied her daughter’s flyaway hair absently. ‘There’s still a long way to go, I’m afraid.’
‘Will there be snow?’
‘In August?’ Rory scoffed.
‘No, there won’t be any snow. Not on the ground anyway.’
‘I can see the sea!’ Flora pressed her nose against the window of the railway carriage.
‘Aye, that’s the Moray Firth,’ said Archie, with a hint of pride.
Rory looked up at his father. ‘Where the dolphins live?’
‘Aye. Inverness is a good place to watch for dolphins. The tail-end of the Gulf Stream brings them in.’
‘Can we go and look for dolphins?’
Archie laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘No, we haven’t time. We’re going to have breakfast in the station hotel.’
‘Porridge!’ Flora exclaimed.
‘Aye, if you wish,’ Archie laughed. ‘It’s breakfast with Uncle Hamish, then he’ll drive us up to Tigh na Mara. We’ll be there by lunchtime.’
‘And then can we go and play on the beach?’ Flora asked. ‘Can we take a picnic?’
‘Of course you can. If it’s not raining,’ Dora added.
Flora grasped her mother’s hand and shook it impatiently. ‘Can we play even if it is raining?’
‘We’ll see.’
Rory looked at his sister. ‘That means no.’
‘Look! We’re stopping!’ Flora shrieked.
‘Aye, this is Inverness. Look out now for Hamish on the platform.’
Flora began to wave indiscriminately at people on the platform as the train came to a standstill. Giggling, she threw her arms round her brother and squeezed him. He tolerated the crushing embrace but turned his head away and looked out of the window at the gulls wheeling above the platform. ‘Herring gulls,’ he remarked to no one in particular.
Releasing him, Flora announced, ‘The first thing I’m going to do when we get there is run down to the sea! Will you come with me, Ror?’
He considered. ‘After I’ve put some food out for the pine marten.’
‘D’you think he’ll still come?’
‘He always comes. Uncle Hamish feeds him every day. But we won’t see him until dusk.’
‘When’s that?’
‘When it isn’t quite light and it isn’t quite dark. When it’s half-and-half. That’s when lots of creatures come out. That’s when some birds perch and sing.’
‘Why do they do it then?’
‘Because they feel safe. Predators can’t see to hunt because their eyes don’t work properly in the funny light.’
‘What’s a predator?’
Rory closed his eyes, summoning patience, then opened them again. ‘Flor,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘You’re an ignoramus!’
‘What’s an ignoramus?’
I caught the bus to Gairloch on the north-west coast. From there I’d have to take a taxi to Badachro. Rory had sent me the house keys, which he’d taken from Orchard Farm without telling Dora. He found them where they’d always been kept, in a drawer in Archie’s bureau.
In Gairloch I shopped for groceries, paraffin and some whisky for Rory. I didn’t know exactly when he was arriving but I hoped he’d bring a car-load of food and fuel, or at least some cash. After some deliberation I picked up a bottle of vodka. I thought I’d be able to manage a long wait without food, but not vodka.
I took a taxi to the house. The driver looked surprised when I gave the name and queried it, but being a Highlander he didn’t ask questions except to remark by way of cautious conversational opener, ‘You’ll be on your holidays then?’
I stared fixedly out of the window, my eyes swimming and replied, ‘No. As a matter of fact, I’ve come home.’
The keys were hardly necessary. A tree had fallen - blown down in a gale probably - and a branch had shattered a downstairs window, leaving what had once been the dining room open to the elements and wildlife.
The house which had belonged to my Uncle Hamish originally, then to my father, was a traditional croft house, over a hundred years old, not modernised since the sixties. We’d taken long family holidays there every summer for years until Rory went away to music college. The house had once been painted the traditional white but years of neglect and Highland weather had scoured away any protective coating so that it now looked flayed, its faded paintwork peeling from doors and window-frames, its rendering exposed, grey and porous, like sick, elderly skin.
The path had completely disappeared and I ploughed through knee-high thistles, wild flowers and coarse
grass to get to the front door where a rowan tree leaned, performing its traditional task of keeping evil spirits from the door. I was undeterred. I passed a For Sale board lying face-down in the grass and wondered how many years it had lain there.
Archie once told me that the house was mine. When we were children he said that the grand piano was Rory’s and Tigh na Mara was mine. As a child I thought I’d got the best of the bargain which compensated a little for Rory’s autocratic dictates about the use of the music room and the piano. The music room was his kingdom; I pretended Tigh na Mara was mine. The difference was that Rory didn’t want to share his kingdom with me, but mine was of little interest to me without him.
Dora had put Tigh na Mara on the market when Rory had the accident. She was hoping to raise some cash - I suppose she’d have given it to Rory and Grace, even though the house was meant to be mine - but offers were few and risible and somehow it had never been sold. Probably its only value now was as a secluded building plot with a sea-view. The land at the back of the house shelved gently down to a stony shore that revealed sand only when the tide was out. The large, spherical, many-coloured pebbles shone like jewels when they were wet, so that the beach was actually more colourful in the rain than in sunshine.
Rain or shine, Rory and I virtually lived on the beach as children, climbing rocks, skimming stones, exploring rock pools, beachcombing. Our feet were rough with weeks of going barefoot, our hands and knees scarred with climbing and tumbling off rocks and out of trees. We were permanently wet and frequently half-naked - brown-skinned, straw-haired sea creatures, mer-children who lived half on land, half in water.
I turned the key, pushed the door hard and walked into the hall. There was a convulsive flapping of wings and several birds fluttered away upstairs. I stood at the foot of the staircase and looked up. There was a hole in the landing ceiling which had clearly been caused by water cascading through a hole in the roof. A grey tongue of floral wallpaper hung curling down the brown-stained wall and the air stank of mildew and rot.
I turned away, dispirited, and entered the primitive kitchen. It wasn’t too bad if you ignored the mouse droppings. I flicked a switch and a light came on but the bulb went immediately. There were still a few pots and pans in a cupboard, some crockery and cutlery, a can opener, even a corkscrew. I began to feel a little more optimistic, as if I might get by until Rory arrived.
And after Rory arrived, nothing else would matter. Whatever the difficulties - cold, wet, rot, holes in the roof, mice, rats, bats, owls, feral cats - none of it would matter because Rory and I would be together.
My brother would look after me.
1953
‘We’re lost.’
‘No, we’re not.’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘We’re not lost, we just don’t know where we are on the map.’
‘Same thing.’
‘No, it’s not! You can’t be lost if you’ve got a map.’
‘You can if you can’t read the map!’
‘Shut up, Flor - I’m trying to concentrate.’ Rory turned the map round again, studied it, then looked up into the distance, searching for landmarks.
Flora sank down on to the heather and lay on her back, staring up at the sky, counting the colours: pink, orange, lavender, and a little bit of blue, the colour of a blackbird’s egg. ‘We’re lost and we’re going to go round and round in circles for ever. And then we’ll starve to death,’ she added cheerfully.
Unconcerned, Rory stared at the map again. ‘You’d die of thirst long before you starved to death. But not here - there’s plenty of water.’
‘I’m hungry!’ Flora whined.
‘You only just finished the biscuits!’
‘I was hungry before we finished the biscuits. And I’m still hungry.’
‘Well, there’s nothing left to eat, so just belt up and let me think. We need to go south. If we keep going south we’ll be bound to hit the road and then we can hitch a lift.’
‘What if there are no cars?’
‘If we don’t get a lift, we’ll just follow the road. A road has to lead somewhere. As soon as we find a telephone box we’ll dial 999 and get them to tell Ma and Dad.’
‘They’ll have given us up for dead by now,’ Flora said with gloomy satisfaction.
‘No, they won’t. We’ve been out all day before. They won’t be worried. Not yet. We just need to head south.’
‘Why don’t you use the compass?’
Rory hesitated. ‘I’ve lost it.’
‘Lost it?’
‘It must have fallen out of the knapsack when we had lunch.’
‘Oh, so now we’re completely doomed! They’ll send out a search party and find nothing but skeletons. We’ll have been eaten up by buzzards and eagles and… and vultures!’
‘There aren’t any vultures in Scotland,’ Rory said calmly. ‘Now, will you just put a sock in it and let me think? There has to be a way of doing this without a compass.’
‘Well, hurry up. The sun’s going down and it’ll soon be dark.’
Rory’s eyes widened and he turned to look at Flora, sprawled on the ground, squinting up at the sky. ‘That’s it!’
‘What?’
‘The sun! The sun’s going down in the west! If we keep the sun on our right, we’ll be walking south! Come on!’
Dazed, Flora got to her feet again. ‘Did I say something clever?’
Resuming his usual cool authority, Rory said, ‘No, not really. You just jogged my memory.’
‘So - are we going to be all right then?’
‘ ’Course we are! Have I ever let you down?’
Flora thought for a moment. ‘No.’
‘Well, there you are then.’
As they set off in the failing light Flora took Rory’s hand. For once he didn’t snatch it away.
There were some blankets and some old darned sheets in a rusting tin trunk in one of the bedrooms. I unpacked the clothes I’d brought with me into a chest of drawers: jumpers, cord trousers, thick woollen socks. This far north it was only ever summer during the day. The nights would be chilly, especially in an unheated house.
The nights…
I turned and looked at the bare mattress on the old brass bedstead my parents had shared. I laid my hands on the ticking, registered the damp, told myself it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not any more.
I made up the bed and lit a fire in the bedroom grate using lumps of coal I found at the bottom of the bunker. The heavy paraffin stove could stay in the kitchen until Rory arrived. I was prepared to sleep wearing all the clothes I’d brought with me if necessary.
I gave the kitchen and its rodent population a wide berth. Instead I emptied a tin of ravioli into a saucepan and set it on the coal fire, feeling like a Girl Guide. I sat down in the old rocking chair with its reassuring creak and polished off the pasta with a spoon, straight from the pan. For pudding I heated up some long-life milk in another pan and melted a bar of chocolate in it. It tasted wonderful.
Standing in front of the fire, I changed into an old pair of winceyette pyjamas, then, shivering, donned my raincoat again. I pulled back the blankets, got into bed and looked across at the space where Rory would lie. A shudder racked my body - whether of fear, desire or just cold, I couldn’t tell. I sat up, got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen, making lots of noise to disperse nocturnal wildlife. As soon as my hand clasped the vodka bottle I felt better, safer. I found a dusty tumbler, rinsed it under the tap and ran upstairs again. I poured myself a generous measure, pulled the rocking chair up to the dying fire and sat staring into it.
Waiting.
1949
‘Flora, what are you doing, sitting on the stairs? Get back into bed at once!’
‘I’m waiting for Rory to come home.’
Dora sat down beside her daughter and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Darling, he isn’t coming home! He’s gone away to school. We won’t see him until half-term.’
Flora sc
rewed up her face as she made her calculations. ‘But that’s not for weeks!’
‘No, I know. He’s gone away to school to be a boarder. He’ll live at school and we’ll see him during the holidays.’
‘But he told me he’d be back soon.’
‘Did he? Well, that was very naughty, because he won’t. Perhaps he was just trying to be kind.’
‘It isn’t kind to tell lies.’
‘No, you’re right, it isn’t,’ Dora said vaguely. She was brought up short - not for the first time - by her daughter’s stark moral code which admitted only black and white, good and evil; which acknowledged no nuance of behaviour, no grey area where one might stand comfortably and prevaricate, evading or simply ignoring all that was difficult about human nature.
‘It isn’t kind to tell lies,’ Dora conceded. ‘But sometimes it’s kinder to tell lies than to tell the truth. Truth can hurt just as much as lies, you know.’ Dora was of the opinion that truth, by its very nature, had a far greater capacity to hurt. Lies at least had the virtue of being untrue and, once identified as such, could be dismissed. Truth, Dora had found, was rather more persistent.
‘You’ll see,’ she said briskly. ‘The weeks will soon pass. And Rory will send us letters. You can write to him! You’ll enjoy that. You can tell him all your news. In a proper letter with a stamp!’
Refusing to be seduced by stationery, Flora said solemnly, her voice tolling like a bell, ‘He said he’d be back soon.’
‘Well, he was mistaken. He won’t. Now come along, it’s time for bed. Would you like me to read you a story?’
‘No, thank you. I’m waiting for Rory. He said he’d be back. He promised.’
‘Flora, you can’t spend the night sitting on the stairs!’
‘Yes, I can. I’m not tired. It’s all right, you can go to bed and leave me, I shan’t be frightened. But I’m not sure if I shall be able to open the front door when Rory comes. The handle is hard for me to turn.’
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