Little Bird Flies

by Karen McCombie

  “My, that is a sad dream to have, Bridie MacKerrie!” he announces, holding the boat steady enough in the deeper water that I might scramble in.

  “No, it is a joyful one to me, Will Beaton,” I counter, feeling clumsy as a newborn calf as I haul myself aboard.

  “Well … if we are telling each other secrets, then I too have always had a dream, Little Bird,” my friend replies. “But it is very different to yours. And you appear most clearly in mine.”

  Our eyes meet, and there is such a tenderness in his expression that I find myself suddenly shy of his meaning. But only shy, not angry as I might have been in the past.

  Before Will can say more that might make me shyer still, my father thunders into the cove on Will’s foaming-mouthed pony.

  He may be surprised to see us here, but there is something more desperate on his mind than to go asking for our reasons.

  “I think I hear a horse and rider coming after me!” he calls out, jumping from his steed. “Someone must have seen me go.”

  Father immediately splashes and wades into the waves, while the pony prances on the sand, uncertain what to do.

  The curdling in my stomach returns, and I think of my words to Miss Kitty – how I would be glad never to see her again – and remember that her pale eyes studied me in that moment, as if she were puzzling over my words. Did she suspect? Did she mention something to her parents, who watched for Father leaving?

  Oh, we are in danger of being discovered – and it is all the fault of my hot temper!

  Still, there is nothing I can do but make haste.

  “Pass him up!” I say to Will, who is already scooping the paddling Patch from the water.

  The little boat lurches madly as he hands the dog into my arms, what with Father clambering on board beside me.

  “Get yourself out of here, Will,” Father says urgently. “Ride away along the shoreline and you’ll soon be out of sight of anyone coming.”

  “Yes, sir,” Will says, then stares at me with an intensity I am not used to. “Oh, Little Bird – A h-uile latha sona dhut, ’s gun latha idir dona dhut.”

  “May every day be happy for you, and no day ever bad…”

  I cannot answer him.

  I cannot speak.

  That old Gaelic saying, one laden with sweet affection, has quite unravelled me, and all I can do is watch – blinking hard – as Will turns his attention back to the stern of the boat.

  Making a sound between a groan and a roar, he gives one last hard shove against the tide to send us on our way.

  His effort works; we lurch further out, now sucked by the cresting waves, Father splashing his oars into the choppy water.

  “Will!” I call out to the boy who stands waist-deep in the buffeting sea, watching me go from him. “Will!”

  “Leave! HURRY!” Father shouts at him.

  At last I see that Will does as he is bid, and lopes dripping out of the sea, beckoning his horse over to him and quickly mounting it before galloping off along the shoreline.

  I turn on my wooden plank of a seat, so that I might watch my dear friend become smaller, borne quite away from me … all the time unsure if the salt taste in my mouth is sea spray or the tears that are streaming down my face.

  This far out, the waves are smaller, and I risk rising a little from my perch for one last glimpse before I lose sight of my Will altogether.

  “Just in time,” Father says to me, sounding alarmed. “There’s someone at the cove now! Is it that Jenkins man?”

  The familiar crack startles me – and I know that Father is right.

  “Good God, is he shooting at us? Hold on, Bridie, hold on!”

  But I am not holding on.

  I am still half risen, and with the shock of the gunshot coupled with the sudden, barging surge of a wave, I am flung from the boat in the blink of an eye.

  There is a moment … a fleeting moment when I turn and twist in the weightless air – and then I crash hard into the cold of the endless ocean, where the weight of my dress and the boots I have draped around my neck act like stones to sink me.

  And – oh! – under the waves, the strangeness is the quiet. My limbs might struggle, but it is a soundless struggle as the sea blocks up my ears, and tries to force itself into my mouth. As if the sea itself wants to show this little bird that it is stronger than the sky she stares up into so often, so longingly.

  Or is the island playing a joke on me, punishing me, for wanting to flee it so badly?

  Tornish, or maybe all its magic sprites and such that I refused to believe in, have decided that I may never leave. Perhaps my destiny is to be found, washed up on the shore, with seaweed as my shroud, and be buried next to Mother in the churchyard.

  Mother.

  At the thought of her, a surge fills my heart.

  An undertow sweeps warm below me, lifting me, I rise higher, my bulging eyes fixed on a shape above.

  A final, silken lift and I am risen enough – enough for Father’s muscled arm to wrap around me and I am scooped up like a stray pearl from the seabed.

  As Father heaves and drags me back on board, I can just make out that we are drifted far enough from shore that no bullet can touch us.

  “Bridie! Bridie!” Father sobs, clutching me to him as the little dog huddles shivering into my side. “I thought you were lost!”

  But I am not lost, I realise, as I flop weakly into his embrace and stare back at Tornish, at the looming mass of the Glas Crags.

  I might not know where we are bound, but I am on the journey I was meant to take.

  And I will never be lost from my family on the way, not if I trust the guiding hand of she who is always in my heart, who will always remind me that I am luckier than many Highland girls that came before me.

  She who gave birth in a storm but trusted what the old Laird said: that one day, her broken little bird would fly.

  CHAPTER 14

  I do not dream any more.

  Well, I have no dreams that are vivid and clear enough to stay in my mind, not once slivers of light come to wake me through the small window of the attic room in Glasgow that I share with my sisters.

  I do see ghosts, though; all we girls do. Effie will go to the market for her mistress, and drop her basket when she sees a maid that looks like the sulky Maude. Ishbel says her blood runs cold if she strolls along Sauchiehall Street with Caroline and spies some dainty fool’s umbrella bobbing along. Myself, I’ll jump at the sound of a banged door, and think it Mr Jenkins setting off his gun once again. And Caroline – in her lawyer’s office to sign the papers that would grant her independence from her guardian – nearly fainted when a moustachioed man barged in … but he was only another client, in the wrong office.

  Of course, we all know our ghosts are that: twisted memories that will stop haunting us – one day.

  But what I do have that is dear to me is my new hill.

  It is not nearly so high and rocky and dramatic as the Glas Crags, which I last saw blearily, after my unexpected dip in the sea last summer. (I was sure then that I saw Will waving at me from the top, but Father and I were rowed so far away, so close to the rock-laced edges of the mainland, it might just have been the wings of a swooping sea eagle.)

  From up here, on my new hill, the views are not of the rolling Atlantic Ocean, scattered islands rising from its depths, or the distant, snow-peaked mountains of the mainland.

  Instead, I have found myself a long, low rolling hillock, I suppose, and the views I see from my new vantage point – of jumbled, jagged rooftops, spires and chimneys; the bustle of boats on the brown River Clyde – are staggering and wondrous in their own way. More importantly, for the last year, it is where I have come to speak to Mother.

  “There,” I say, placing the posy of wild violets at the feet of the stone angel, which sits on top of a solid white column of headstone. At my own feet, Patch is turning in circles, ready to settle himself down for a welcome rest after the walk here. He is only small, and his limp see
ms to tire him. Unlike me: I can still walk for miles, though these days I trample over pavement and cobbled road instead of cool grass and rough stone. It is made easier for me now that I have soft boots that fit: a gift – one of many to myself and my family – from Caroline.

  “I don’t know why you do that,” Lachlan says sulkily, kicking a stone that clips and skitters down the slope, bouncing off so many people’s graves as it goes, disturbing their endless sleep. “It is not even her.”

  Of course I know this grave is not Mother’s. The name so neatly carved upon it is not “Bridget MacKerrie”; it is “Eliza Garnett”. She was the wife of a sea captain, the words tell me. A loving wife and mother. Taken too soon.

  The vast Necropolis Cemetery is a picturesque and peaceful place, as Samuel described it to me some long-ago day in Tornish. Its avenues of trees and planting making it as much a favourite of the folk of Glasgow to walk around as any park or gardens. But when I first visited with Samuel and Caroline – who will not have us call them “Mr” or “Miss” or “Mistress” as we are such good friends – I found myself drawn to this particular monument.

  Perhaps it was because its occupant, Eliza, was thirty-seven years old, the same age as Mother when she was struck down. Or perhaps it was because Eliza’s angel seemed to look down on me gently with blank, smooth eyes. I felt soothed by that calm gaze. And it was, after all, a time when I needed soothing…

  You see, I had been a fool. Before we fled to the city, I was secretly sure that of all my family, the shock of Glasgow would trouble me the least. What conceit!

  How was it possible to arrive in a city that is as big as the whole of Tornish, but entirely covered in more streets and buildings than you could ever fathom, and not feel frightened? And how could you not be deafened by the constant din of lumbering carriages rattling over cobbles, or the clatter and banging from every direction, as great buildings go up and railway cuts go down? How could you not wince at the odours that assault you, from the cloying smoke that churns from the forest of tall factory chimneys, the stench from the chemical and dye works, the terrible reek – like a byre that is never cleared nor cleaned – from the Wynds where the poorest sort are unfortunate enough to live?

  I did settle, in time, of course. But still it makes me shudder to think that – like so many displaced Highlanders – we might have ended up in the Wynds too, in one of those dank, mean lanes with their tall, thin, crumbling houses packed with families in each festering room.

  We were lucky; with the money in Mother’s tin box (bolstered by the islanders who bought the goods and beasts we left behind on Tornish), we had enough for the rent on a little better of a place. Father’s skills also meant he soon got work, thankfully. And our luck also came in the form of Samuel and Caroline… Naturally, Father was shocked when he discovered the secret rescue of Caroline that Ishbel, Effie and myself had undertaken. But with the deed done – and my own more recent rescue from the sea itself – Father quickly forgave us, and set his mind more to getting us as far from Tornish and trouble as he could. Reunited, Caroline and Samuel had set off ahead of us, taking the fastest stagecoach they could afford so that they might get quickly to Glasgow and be married for decency and safety’s sake. Once we arrived after our slower route – past the farms and places Father had worked in, where he could call on favours of food and a cart ride to the next town – Samuel looked around for decent lodgings for us. “It was the least I could do,” he told Father, when he took us, all tired and bedraggled from our journeying, to some rooms above a little shop where he bought his art supplies.

  I am ashamed to say my heart sank when I went up the creaking back stairs and found our new home to be two dark, cold, comfortless little attic rooms, with nothing but a bed in each and a blackened fire and range in the bigger of the two.

  “There is a market, not too far, that sells all manner of good-quality second-hand furnishings,” Samuel had said quickly, apologetically. “We would have picked you some things ourselves, if we had more time.”

  “It will do us fine,” Father had assured him, while Caroline looked in vain for somewhere to lay down the basket of food she had brought us as a welcoming gift.

  And our new home, naturally, is fine. With a dresser, tables, chairs and rugs bought, the rooms have long since taken on a less despairing air. Our few beloved things from Tornish were placed around by Ishbel and Effie and I; a lace cloth here, an embroidered cushion there; the china dogs and clock on the mantle, pictures on the wall – including the now-framed drawing Samuel made of we three sisters by the fire in the cottage the day Mistress Palmer-Reeves came to visit.

  The important thing is, it is truly a cosy home that Father, Ishbel and Effie love to come back to after a day’s work.

  And now that schooling is finished for the summer, our home is my domain entirely; while Father labours at Broomielaw Quay, Ishbel keeps house for Samuel and Caroline, and Effie is a maid in a villa nearby, my work is to stay home and cook and clean and look after Lachlan.

  The first two I do with no complaint, for who else would take care of these duties, while my sisters are earning decent money for the family?

  The third is a more difficult task. My nine-year-old brother does not want to be looked after. Especially since I have stayed small and slight, while he is sprouting and already a little taller than me!

  “I’m away,” he says curtly to me now, hunching his shoulders against any argument.

  “But we are expected at Mrs Lennox’s house shortly!” I remind him, to no effect, as he has already broken into a sprint and is determined not to heed my words. In fact, my words are drowned out by his whistling for Patch, who leaps up and quickly limps after his beloved companion.

  “I do not know what to make of him,” I lean back on the stone and tell Mother, as I watch Lachlan disappear behind the shelter of headstones and trees, with Patch barking and chasing behind. “He is so very changed from the lad he was on Tornish! I wonder if he too sees ghosts but will not admit to being feared by them…”

  Certainly, where Lachlan was once sweet, he is now sullen. Once he was my shadow and I was so sure of his adoration; now he cannot be doing with me, preferring the company of Alec, a boy from school he has been running with these last months. I would be glad that Lachlan at last has a friend his age, but I am not taken with this Alec. I came home not so long ago, laden with stuff for our supper, only to find this dark-haired, elfin-like lad in the kitchen with Lachlan. He looked at me most insolently, with a mocking smile on his face when he saw me walk in my usual halting way.

  “But do not worry, I will always my keep my patience with Lachlan and I will always protect him,” I say, giving Mother a solemn promise, even though the patience part is sometimes difficult indeed…

  In the distance, a church bell tolls, alerting me to the time and the fact that Mrs Lennox is expecting her visitors, though she will have to make do with just me.

  “Goodbye, Mother,” I tell her, pressing my fingers first to my lips then to Eliza’s gravestone.

  With that kiss to my dearest kin, I take my leave of the angel and meander down the path between the headstones, glancing up as I go at the plump grey pigeons that flap above me. They may not have the white beauty of the seagulls of home, or the majesty of the giant sea eagles that glide around the tip of the Crags, but they have a sound so pleasing and comical that it always makes me smile.

  And one year on, I listen for every sound this teeming city has to offer.

  For the more I hear of the world around me, the less I am afraid of the ghosts of the past or the wily whispers of my secret self.

  CHAPTER 15

  “OOO-oh-OOO-oh-EH!”

  What must passers-by think of this scrawny girl making such a strange noise as she ambles along?

  I don’t much care, of course. Folk can think what they want of me humming my daft tune all the way to Mrs Lennox’s, the cooing sound of it to mimic the city birds, and the rhythm of it a likeness of the milking
songs of home.

  Before I know it, I find myself at a neat, green, square of a park, with four roads leading off it, all of them containing rows and rows of grand red sandstone villas. I turn into the first road I come to and am quickly at Mrs Lennox’s gate. Her garden is filled with bonnie shrubs and rose bushes and I take a deep breath of them as I pass the imposing front door, glistening with a glossy dark-blue paint and shining brass knob, with a matching circular knocker.

  Of course, I would not dream of touching the door knocker, unless – like Effie – I was tasked to polish it. For the side entrance is where I am headed, as I often am if I stop by to wait for Effie to finish up her work. Though today is different, I suppose … rather than sitting at the kitchen table – where I have met Mrs Lennox many times when she has come to discuss household issues with Effie – I am instead invited for afternoon tea, in the main house, no less!

  “Come away in!” Effie calls out from the kitchen, when she spies me through the door she has left open for me, or for us, rather. “Where’s Lachlan?”

  “He would not come; he bolted from me,” I tell her.

  In the old days on the island, Effie’s mood would have darkened at that, and I would have expected the sharp edge of her tongue. But since we came here, since we worked together to flee the island, she treats me – thankfully – as her equal.

  “Oh, that lad wearies me, he really does,” Effie sighs, as she busies herself setting a china tea service on a big silver tray. “Still, you are here, Bridie. Come on, follow me through…”

  My heart gives such a lurch of excitement as I trot after my sister, watching her stiff grey poplin skirt flounce as she walks. Effie’s pretty plumpness is pinched into an hourglass waist that she is so proud of, even if she does sigh and grumble fastening herself into her corset in the mornings. She is also very taken with the dainty, lace-edged muslin cap tied about her dark-red hair, one of several given to her by her mistress.