Nell had dutifully perched between Vicky and me to eat, but as soon as her quiche was gone, she threw her crusts onto the grass and began to flit around, trying her charms on the guests. She talked to Jill and Colin for a few minutes, then moved on to Dale and Rosie. The night before, Rosie had won the badminton tournament, and today she was dressed for a country picnic in a neat blouse, slacks, and walking shoes. She asked Nell which beach she liked best and what other islands she had visited. To my relief Nell answered politely. Then she asked if Rosie liked Petula Clark.
“I don’t really know her music,” Rosie said apologetically. “Is she one of your favourites?”
I had never thought to wonder at Nell’s choice of names for the calves, but now, as she listed several songs, I realised that even then she had been thinking of her mother. I pictured her at the top of St. Magnus, asking if she could see Glasgow. Perhaps when she was older we could go there for a visit. Vicky was gathering the food and I stood up to clear the plates. My years at Claypoole had made me acutely aware of people’s leavings. I noted Rosie’s and Dale’s shining plates, Jill’s and Colin’s empty, save for a few shreds of lettuce, Coco’s filled with food the pigs would have loved, and Mr. Sinclair’s not spotless but close.
“Look at the little bird,” Coco said. Several birds had discovered the crusts Nell had thrown on the grass.
“It’s a pied wagtail,” I said. “They eat all kinds of insects and in winter their faces get much whiter.”
“A wagtail,” Coco exclaimed. “What does it mean that all these birds associated with you-know-what are so small. Little willy wagtail? Little cock robin?”
I knew there was something behind her words that I didn’t understand; still, I had to correct her. “Things are often different for birds,” I said. “Look how beautiful the male peacock is with his huge tail, and the male mallard is gorgeous with his green head and white necklace. The females don’t need to be flashy to attract attention.”
But Coco had no interest in learning more about birds, or at least not from me; she was already turning back to the houses. “Perhaps we’ll find a necklace,” she said. “Or a chalice, whatever that is. Wouldn’t that be super?”
I was about to explain that a chalice was a metal drinking cup, and also that any finds belonged to the government, but before I could speak, I felt Mr. Sinclair’s gaze again. He gave me a little nod and allowed Coco to take his arm. She made a show of tottering over the short grass and then bent to remove her sandals. Her toenails were the same scarlet as her fingernails. While Nell and I sat with our sketchbooks to draw the village, she climbed down into one of the houses and insisted on trying a Stone Age bed. Knees to her chest she could barely fit on even the larger of the slabs.
“I feel like a sacrificial maiden,” she said.
“Not exactly a maiden,” called Jill from the next house. She was bending over the dresser, examining how the stones fitted together. It was easy to picture her in a white coat, splinting a dog’s leg.
“Come and join me,” called Coco, waving at Mr. Sinclair.
His shoulders gave a little twitch and he clambered down to perch on the stone shelf. “Maybe this was the seat reserved for the wise elders,” he said, “which meant anyone over twenty-five. So tell me”—he turned to Nell—“what Gemma’s taught you about the village.”
“The houses are all the same,” she said in her best explaining voice. “Each has two beds, and a fireplace and a dresser where people kept food and necklaces. In the book we read, it said that one of the houses had a place for limpets. Some of them have chairs. They think the village used to be farther from the sea. Gemma says they’ll find out more when they dig more.”
“And how old are the houses?”
“At first they said Iron Age but now they think neo . . . neo.”
“Neolithic,” I said. “New Stone Age.”
A few feet away Coco was twisting and turning on her stone bed in a way that seemed designed to draw attention to her long tanned legs. Mr. Sinclair summoned Nell to show him her picture. She said she needed five more minutes. While I watched, she sketched in Coco and her uncle. She gave him a club and a beard, and Coco an off-the-shoulder bearskin and thick eyelashes. At their feet she drew a little tangled heap. “What’s that?” I said.
“Coco’s shoes,” she whispered.
After Nell had shown her drawing to Mr. Sinclair and he had praised her depiction of him and the houses—“though you didn’t do Coco justice”—I led her down to the beach. We played hopscotch on the damp sand until we heard Vicky calling.
On the drive home Nell said, “Does Coco want to marry Uncle Hugh?”
“She’s certainly setting her cap at him,” said Vicky.
“So then”—I couldn’t see Nell’s face but I could hear the pleasure in her voice—“I’d have an aunt as well as an uncle.”
“Of a kind,” said Vicky. We exchanged glances in the mirror.
That night, when Nell was at last asleep, and the sounds of revelry from the dining-room reminded me of a pack of hounds in full cry, I sneaked out of the house, retrieved my bicycle, and headed to the village. I had no plan other than to find Todd. I would be in his presence, and whatever happened would happen. Perhaps we would simply sit side by side, talking about university and his studies, perhaps . . . I knew only that the sight of Coco laughing and squirming on the stone bed had made me reluctant to climb quietly into mine. Would Mr. Sinclair be happy with someone who didn’t know a pied wagtail from a mallard? The Iron Age from the Stone Age? And what would happen if she became the mistress of Blackbird Hall? I pictured Nell at a school like Claypoole. My lovely room, my job, gone in a flick of her scarlet nails.
“Au pair,” Coco would say incredulously, shimmying her blond hair.
When I got to the village, Nora’s house was dark. Perhaps, I thought, they were visiting a neighbour. I walked my bike down the road, studying the lit-up windows of the houses on either side, hoping to spot Nora, or Todd. I would tap on the window and Todd would look up with a smile. In one house I glimpsed the minister and his wife, in another the postmistress and her sister. If Nora and her family were visiting, it was farther afield. On impulse I stopped at the one place in the village I could legitimately enter at any hour. Leaning my bike against the wall, unclipping my light, I pushed through the gate into the churchyard. In all my weekly visits I had never before stopped to look at the graves. Now I began to walk up and down the rows, shining my torch on the stones, some new and upright, some old and perilously aslant. I came upon several Sinclairs, including Vicky’s parents. At last I found Mr. Sinclair’s brother.
“Roy Albert Sinclair, beloved son of Hamish and Elspeth. His Redeemer calleth. 1923–1953.”
Next to him were their parents. Hamish had died in 1960, Elspeth less than two years ago, in August 1964. My torch caught a flash of scarlet. A vase of dahlias—the same colour as those blooming in the border at Blackbird Hall—stood beside the stone. I kept searching up and down the rows. No grave bore Alison’s name.
Back at the hall the lights were still on downstairs. I put my bike in the shed and began to walk around the house, thinking to slip in through the back door. I had just turned the corner when the sound of voices stopped me.
“Can we go sailing tomorrow?” Coco said.
“If the wind drops, if the tide is right, and if Mr. Pirie will lend me his boat.”
They were sitting on the bench beneath the beech trees; I could make out the glimmer of Coco’s blouse and of Mr. Sinclair’s white shirt. Grateful for my dark clothes, I edged closer to the fountain.
“Why don’t you get your own boat? You could call it HMS Coco.”
“Because it would pain my thrifty Scottish soul to spend money on something I used only two or three times a year. As a boy I had to gather driftwood and dig potatoes to earn my pocket money. My parents saved string and pieces of soap and the sticky edges of sheets of stamps. Buying a boat would be like burning money on their grave
s.”
Rather than giving them red dahlias, I thought.
“So tell me, Madame Coco,” he went on, “why did Giles decline my invitation to come here so vehemently? One week the two of you seemed to be heading to the altar. The next you’d prefer to be at opposite ends of the country.”
“I don’t want to talk about Giles. He’s a philanderer.” She said the word so lazily that at first I thought she was referring to some kind of shrub, a cousin of the rhododendron. She slipped off the bench and, stepping away from the trees, sat and then lay back on the grass.
“You have good stars here,” she said. “My first boyfriend had a telescope. He taught me how to find the rings of Saturn, but we never had stars like this near Brighton.”
“Giles might use an even harder word about you. Just when he lost his job you couldn’t give him the time of day.”
“Don’t let’s talk about Giles,” Coco repeated. “Here we are in your Scottish stronghold. Colin told me today that there’s a legend about your family: that only second sons will inherit. The oldest son is always doomed. So that means you have to have at least two sons.”
But Mr. Sinclair was not to be deterred. He began to give Giles’s version of the break-up. He had uttered only a few sentences when Coco sat up.
“Do you know what Giles says about you? That you ruined the Mercer deal.” I couldn’t follow the story she poured out: something about one chain of shops buying another, and about how Mr. Sinclair, at the crucial moment, had revealed something that jeopardised the sale.
“You shouldn’t believe everything Giles says,” Mr. Sinclair said. He spoke softly, but I knew he was angry.
“I don’t, and nor should you.”
“Touché.” He bent towards her.
Don’t, I thought. Please don’t.
I had never been able to send a message to anyone, not even Miriam, so surely it was only coincidence that at that moment Jill appeared in the doorway, calling her sister’s name.
chapter twenty
The next day was a proper island day, the wind coming straight from the northeast, buffeting the rain against the windows. I was on my way to feed the calves when Jill appeared in the cloakroom to ask if she could accompany me; Nell had told her about our pets. They were old enough now to require feeding only twice a day, and we had moved them from the barn to the nearest field. As Jill and I trudged through the mud of the farmyard, I caught sight of Seamus coming out of the granary, a sack over his shoulder; since the arrival of the guests, he had been even more absent than usual. Now, without seeming to notice us, he headed towards the byre.
Petula and Herman were huddled in a corner of the field next to the drinking trough. At the sound of their names they began to struggle towards the gate, their slender legs sinking into the mud with each step.
“This is ridiculous,” Jill said as we watched Herman pull a hind leg free. “They should be in the barn until the storm passes.”
“Seamus won’t like it.” I wiped the rain from my face. “He already thinks I mollycoddle them.”
“No farmer wants to lose his livestock. Besides, this isn’t mollycoddling. Calves survive bad weather because they have their mothers to shelter them. Come on. You take one. I’ll take the other.”
In a moment she had opened the gate, ploughed through the mud, and looped her tartan scarf around Herman’s neck. I managed to loop my own scarf around Petula. Together we led them back across the farmyard. Inside the barn Jill called out for Seamus and, when there was no answer, chose the nearest empty stall. We fed the calves and I asked if I should fetch a towel to dry them.
“They’ll be fine,” said Jill. “Just get them a bucket of water. What you need to watch out for in calves this age is scouring. If you see excrement on their hindquarters, call a vet at once.”
She bent to stroke them one last time and joined me in the doorway. We both hesitated, daunted by the rain overhead and the puddles underfoot.
“Good grief,” she said. “And this is July. I wouldn’t like to be here in winter.”
“I only arrived in February,” I offered. “Vicky says in December it’s dark by three.”
“I’d hate that. At Skara Brae yesterday I kept thinking about the families who lived there—how bleak it must have been during a storm, the waves pounding on the shore.”
“But the sea was their main source of food,” I said, quoting the island history book. “And maybe people then were more like bears and could hibernate.”
“Bears hibernate because there’s nothing to eat,” Jill said thoughtfully. “Perhaps there did used to be a human equivalent, a way to slow down the body. Forgive my asking, but why aren’t you at university? You seem very bright.”
Briefly, trying to conceal my pleasure, I explained about Claypoole closing and how I had needed a job. I hoped to take my exams next year, I added.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jill said with an energetic nod. “You should be studying alongside Nell. Come on, let’s make a dash for it.”
Holding on to our hats, we waded out into the rain.
While Nell and I did lessons, the guests lounged away the morning: reading, chatting, playing billiards. The sounds of their conversation made Nell fidgety, and she kept making excuses—a glass of water, the bathroom, a cardigan—to leave the schoolroom. She returned from the last errand, skipping gleefully. We were giving a party tomorrow, she announced, and despite the short notice people were saying yes. When I went to fetch elevenses, Vicky confirmed the plan and told me that Coco was insisting on fancy dress. In the wardrobe of her room she had discovered several evening dresses that had belonged to Mrs. Sinclair. “She went right ahead and tried them on,” Vicky said, shaking her head at the impertinence. Mr. Sinclair had agreed to say that fancy dress was encouraged.
Even the promise of future excitement, however, did not placate Coco. At lunch she announced she was bored, bored, bored. She had come to the Orkneys to play golf, and if there was to be no golf today, then she wanted to go to Kirkwall. The six of them could have dinner and stay in a hotel. “I’m fed up with all these fields,” she said.
“Ridiculous,” fumed Vicky as she carried the plates into the kitchen. “They’ll spend a fortune to eat fish and chips and sleep in the Kirkwall Hotel. She just wants to show everyone that she’s got Mr. Sinclair eating out of her hand.”
But in preparing for the party she recovered her good spirits. The prospect of the house filled with people appealed to her sociable instincts. She asked apologetically if I would mind sharing Nell’s room. Some old family friends, the Laidlaws, were coming from the south island and needed a bed for the night. She made a long list of groceries, enlisted the help of Nora and another girl, and organised music. Todd would bring his accordion, and a couple of lads from the village were grand fiddlers. I had been fantasising dancing a reel or two with some unknown guest, but now, remembering the evening when Todd and Mr. Sinclair had met, I resolved to watch the festivities from a quiet corner.
The next day the wind was even stronger, the rain heavier. Whatever time I had free from kitchen duties I used to help Nell fashion her costume. After wavering between a cat and a witch, she had chosen the former. We found a pair of black trousers in her wardrobe. A black cardigan of mine, with some pinning, made a top. We cut ears out of cardboard, painted them, and attached them to an Alice band. A black sock served as the tail. I practised drawing whiskers on her cheeks with eyeliner until she was satisfied.
“What about your costume?” she said.
“I’m helping Vicky with the food. I’ll be dressed as a waitress.”
I was joking, but Nell pouted until I promised that, once the food was served, I would come down in my own pair of ears. Far preferable, I thought, to be a second cat than to look as if I had tried to compete.
The guests returned that afternoon. Coco and Jill ran back and forth, asking for thread and safety pins, and Jill asked if they could set up the ironing board in the corridor outside their room
s. As I helped Vicky in the kitchen, I recalled the last Christmas at Yew House, when I had been left to peel the chestnuts with Mrs. Marsden. But this was different, I told myself; I was being paid for my labour. I pictured Coco, the belle of the ball in some elegant gown, and Jill, more sedately dressed, happy with Colin. As for Mr. Sinclair, I imagined him in his old RAF uniform, his goggles on his forehead, a silk scarf around his neck.
The candles were lit; the party guests began to arrive. Syd, the cowman, organised the cars, Nora took the coats, and the musicians struck up. Nell ran in and out of the kitchen, flicking her tail and reporting on what was happening. Mr. Laidlaw was dressed as a raven, she said, and had pretended to be frightened when she meowed. Someone else was Robin Hood. The musicians, even Todd, were wearing kilts. During “The Grand Old Duke of York” I accompanied her into the library and stood near the door, watching. Coco wore a backless turquoise gown with silver fins attached on each side and a streamer of seaweed pinned, fetchingly, to the bodice. Jill was dressed in a pretty flowered frock with a cap and an apron. Colin had put together a sailor’s uniform. As for Mr. Sinclair, he was resplendent in a dinner jacket and cummerbund, which, either by chance or by design, matched Coco’s dress.
I had not seen dancing since I left Yew House. Now I watched with pleasure the way the men and women swung unerringly from partner to partner and how the music made possible a kind of order absent from everyday life. One day, I thought, I would go to a party like this and dance the night away with people who treated me like an equal. I would be beloved and regarded. At eleven o’clock the buffet was served, and I ran in and out, carrying cups of tea. Suddenly—I was refilling a milk jug—I realised I had forgotten the calves.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy Page 19
