Bird of Passage

by Catherine Czerkawska

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  In her waking moments, Kirsty felt not just sad, but angry. Surely Finn must have known what this would do to her? Why had he made love to her and then left her? Did he care about her at all? Her dreams were troubled excursions through the corridors of an unknown house, where ceilings were too low, stairs twisted and turned beneath her dragging feet and doors came off their hinges as soon as she tried to close them. It felt as though the very foundations of her world had shifted. Her mother had been so ill for so many months that she had begun to come to terms with that loss before Isabel died. In some ways, the pain of losing Finn was sharper and more unbearable. He had always been there. She had always counted on him.

  Nicolas sent flowers and chocolates and bottles of wine, none of which were wanted. Kirsty refused to see him at first, but eventually she relented and let him in. They would sit and play gin rummy or board games like Cluedo and even Snakes and Ladders, Kirsty, Nicolas and Alasdair together. For Kirsty, it was a little like recovering after a long illness, although there had been no symptoms other than misery and fatigue. She felt as though the real Kirsty was standing outside herself, watching this other Kirsty, this stranger who was walking and talking and doing what had to be done to survive. Finn hadn’t phoned or written. He had never so much as sent a postcard and at last, she was forced to admit that he was not coming back. She would have to adjust and make the best of it.

  She didn’t think about her work for a long time. Even the effort of wielding a pencil seemed too great. Nicolas went to the mainland and, as he had done while her mother was ill, bought the best that he could find: not just watercolours but oils and acrylics, and pastels. Kirsty watched him unload a great mass of art supplies from the back of the car.

  ‘What on earth possessed you?’ she asked. ‘You seem to have bought the whole shop.’

  ‘I thought it might do you good. Give you something to think about.’

  ‘Well, it’ll do that sure enough.’

  ‘I know winter’s on the way, but I could take you out and about and you could draw.’

  ‘I rather like winter. I like to see the bare bones of things. You can see the landscape the way it really is – the rocks beneath. And the trees, all naked and strong.’

  ‘Then wrap up warm, my darling, and I’ll take you out.’

  Nicolas drove Kirsty up to the north end of the island, where she spent the short afternoons drawing the stunted rowans that grew there, a dozen studies of their bizarre shapes. She became obsessed with a ruin that stood alone, a gable end and two side walls of a big stone house. It was on the old maps, the ones that showed Dunshee as well, but nothing now remained except these three naked walls and a few anonymous lumps and bumps beneath the turf. Nicolas waited and watched as she sketched, reading a paperback, making sure that she was warm enough, feeding her with salmon sandwiches and fruit cake. He could make no sense of the drawings.

  ‘Can’t you see how it falls?’ she asked. ‘Everything falls in the end!’

  Anxious about her, he brought her back and stayed on at Dunshee for supper. Alasdair took himself off to bed early, but Nicolas lingered in the kitchen, helping Kirsty to tidy away the dishes and set the table for morning. She gave him a glass of whisky but refused one for herself.

  ‘The smell of it turns my stomach.’

  ‘But you’re feeling a bit better.’

  ‘I’m better, yes.’

  ‘You’ve had a terrible time.’

  ‘It hasn’t been a picnic.’

  ‘But that… that bastard needn’t have added to your troubles. I could have killed him when I saw you so upset.’

  ‘Don’t talk about it, Nick. I don’t want to talk about it. I’d rather just forget all about him.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. All that fuss about a bloody tinker.’

  She sat down at the table and gazed at him, blinking. It was a nervous tic, one she seemed to have acquired since her mother’s death.

  ‘Shut up, Nick. I don’t want to hear this.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re still defending him.’

  ‘I haven’t been defending him. But I will now, if you like. Maybe he thought it was all for the best. Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing.’

  ‘Then he should have done it years ago. Gone away and got on with his own life. He never really belonged here, Christine. But all the same, he could have waited for a better time.’

  ‘Would there ever have been a right time?’

  ‘I’ve always thought there was something strange about him, you know. He couldn’t interact with people at all. No social skills. I don’t know why you’re so loyal to him. You had nothing in common. And now you know what he’s really like.’

  ‘Yes, now I know what he’s really like.’

  ‘ And you’re much better off without him. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘It’s all for the best, you know.’

  She gazed beyond him, staring at the kitchen window as though half expecting to see a familiar face there.

  ‘So, have you given any thought to ... my proposal.’ Nicolas seemed faintly embarrassed by the word. ‘You’ll never find a more loving husband than me. I really do mean that. I’ll look after you. Nobody could ever love you more than I do.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So what do you think? Do you think we might make a go of it?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe we could. Yes.’

  ‘You don’t sound very positive.’

  ‘What more do you want? I’ve said yes, haven’t I? What more can you ask?’

  Kirsty Galbreath’s engagement to Nicolas Laurence, only a few weeks after her mother’s death, was a nine days’ wonder on the island, and she knew that some people – her grandfather included – were surprised and not altogether pleased by the speed and suddenness of it.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ he kept asking her, in the run-up to the wedding. ‘It seems so sudden and so soon. I knew you were fond of him, but I could never see you married to the man, Kirsty.’

  ‘Why not? Do you think he’s too good for us? Too posh?’

  ‘Not at all, and well you know it, lass. But I always thought ...’ he stopped, and she saw that his face was flushed. ‘Well, I’m not at all sure what I thought. But I do not think you would have agreed to this wedding if Finn were still on the island. There now. It’s said and you can make of it what you wish.’

  ‘But he isn’t here, is he?’

  ‘Och, lass, lass – he may come back.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He’s gone. He’s not coming back. You know it as well as I do. That’s the way he is. So why not marry Nicolas? Why on earth not?’

  ‘There are other things you can do. You’re not reliant on any man, Kirsty, you of all people! I thought you wanted to finish your course. Maybe go to Italy. You could do that now.’

  ‘I have no money. And besides, who would look after you?’

  ‘I can look after myself. My only worry was the farm and Nicolas has seen to that.’

  Without Finn to help him, Alasdair had been struggling with the farm. The week after Kirsty had agreed to the engagement, Nicolas had given him full-time paid help, and it had made all the difference, though Alasdair kept complaining about the new lad and saying that he was not a patch on Finn. But would Nick have been so generous if she had not agreed to marry him?

  ‘I’m painting here. I don’t need to go to Italy.

  It was true. She was painting anyway, compulsively and to the point of exhaustion. It was the only way she could get through each day, creating images on canvas, on paper. Making lines around the light, while Nicolas wore her down with his loving concern.

  Was she somehow paying Finn back for his desertion? And what would it matter, since he would never know about it? Why was she so sure that he wouldn’t be coming back? She didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, but she felt certain about all of them.

  Nicolas’s
family wanted them to wait until spring so that they could bring a few hundred guests over from the mainland, take over the whole hotel and most of Ealachan and have a major celebration, with Kirsty wearing a dress like a snowball and all the men in kilts and all the flowers in Christendom and a celebration meal with a towering wedding cake for Nicolas to slice through with a sword. She knew that Nicolas would have quite liked this as well.

  ‘I want to show you off to everybody,’ he laughed, and she said, ‘like a prize cow, you mean,’ and he said ‘no, not at all’. He was determined not to quarrel with her. He indulged her in all possible ways, so how could she not respond to him? But she drew the line at a big wedding. She felt sick at the thought of it. So she said, ‘You can either marry me now, very quietly, with no guests, other than the family, or not at all.’

  He agreed, of course, as she had known he would.

  On the weekend of the wedding, the weather was foul, the seas a heaving morass with spume blowing off the waves, and gannets plummeting into them. Nobody would have been able to get to the island anyway. The ferry stopped running after one abortive attempt to dock at the mainland side. Nicolas’s parents and Annabel were already there, having arrived early to ‘help out’ and bringing a handful of relatives with them. Annabel had made a point of being friendly. On the morning of the wedding, she came up to Dunshee and helped Kirsty into a lavender cotton Laura Ashley dress with a close fitting bodice and long, full skirt. Then she brushed her hair into a rippling mass of red waves and threaded lilac silk flowers through the length of it.

  ‘You must be really missing your mother,’ said Annabel, with unexpected sensitivity. ‘You must have wanted her to be doing your hair today. I don’t suppose you want me at all.’

  Kirsty’s eyes filled with tears.

  Annabel dabbed at her face with a tissue. ‘Don’t do that darling. Your make-up will run.’

  ‘It was very kind of you to come,’ said Kirsty, and she meant it. She looked at her face in the mirror. ‘I look like a ghost,’ she said and fumbled for the blusher.

  ‘Good idea’ said Annabel. ‘Here. Let me do it for you. You are a bit pale. Only to be expected I suppose.’

  Maybe I am a ghost, she thought, as Annabel brushed colour into her cheeks. Maybe I died and I don’t know it. Maybe I’m a ghost at my own wedding.

  Just before she left, just before the car arrived to take them down to the kirk, Annabel kissed Kirsty on the cheek.

  ‘Thank-you for making my brother so happy.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ said Kirsty. ‘I mean – tell me that in five years’ time.’

  ‘But this is what he’s wanted for ages you know. He’s always been in love with you. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye…’

  ‘We were just children.’

  ‘Let’s start afresh.’

  ‘Alright.’ Kirsty hugged her, thinking, as she did, how like her brother Annabel was now, fair and patrician with sharp blue eyes. ‘Yes’ she said. ‘Alright. Let’s be friends.’

  She came into the church on her grandfather’s arm and saw Nicolas peering anxiously down the aisle. Perhaps he had been expecting her to follow Finn’s example and run away. He was wearing a kilt and he looked unexpectedly vulnerable and very handsome. Annabel and her mother wore smart suits and big hats. From somewhere, probably at great expense, the Laurences had managed to procure lilies, and the scent of them was so strong and sweet that it made her head ache. She wished they hadn’t. It reminded her of the funeral. Outside, the weather was still wild. The wind went rumbling round the kirk and rattled St Columba’s boat and his halo, drowning out the couple’s voices, so that the congregation could hardly hear their vows. Kirsty became tongue tied, and said ‘I do’ in a whisper.

  They had a meal in the hotel dining room afterwards, and Nicolas insisted on everyone drinking pink champagne. Kirsty wasn’t very hungry, though she drank rather a lot, but the more she drank, the paler and more queasy she looked. Annabel and her mother had organised a wedding cake. It was heart shaped and heaped with delicate sugar roses and Kirsty couldn’t help but be touched by it. Annabel seemed very determined to make Kirsty like her.

  Afterwards they went back to Ealachan. And that was the strangest thing of all - not going back to Dunshee, to her own bed in the wall. Her stomach turned over when she thought about it in the car that was taking them to the house. Ealachan was familiar enough now, but she had only ever been there as a visitor. Her heart was pounding. It reminded her of that first day when she had had to go to the mainland to school, moving into the hostel with a bunch of strangers.

  ‘I feel like the second wife in Rebecca.’

  ‘But there’s no first wife to haunt you, darling. And certainly no Mrs Danvers!’

  Nicolas had come and picked up her suitcases and boxes the day before. When she got to Ealachan, after the wedding, she found that somebody had unpacked them and everything had been put away in a vast oak wardrobe and chest of drawers. Mrs Danvers after all, she thought. They were in a big bedroom, bigger than any room she had ever slept in before. It was a room she had never been in, because it was the one where Nicolas’s mother used to sleep, with his father in the next room, with a connecting door between. For one wild moment, she thought that Nicolas intended to do the same thing, but then she saw his striped pyjamas, neatly folded on one side of the bed.

  ‘I think it’s one of the nicest bedrooms in the house, but if you don’t like it, you can pick another,’ he said, anxiously. ‘We’re not exactly short of rooms.’

  There was a four-poster bed with a deep mattress and a hand-made patchwork quilt. There was intricately carved furniture, and it had its own bathroom behind a polished wooden door, in one corner of the room. The big white bath crouched there, a heraldic beast on ball and claw feet and there was a blue flowered loo which Nicolas said was very old and valuable. Kirsty hardly dared to pee in it, never mind anything else. She sat down on the bed, completely exhausted.

  ‘Oh God,’ she thought. ‘He’ll want to make love to me. What will I do?’ and then it occurred to her that this was not what a bride normally felt on her wedding night and she was ashamed of herself.

  They had kissed and touched, but that was all. She had been so fragile after her mother’s death that Nicolas was afraid to go any further. ‘No hurry’ he kept saying. ‘Take your time.’

  That first night, he held her close, soothed her and let her sleep. And in the morning, he was so kind, so tentative, so undemanding, that she couldn’t help but love him in return. She lay in his arms, flooded with pleasure, grateful for his gentleness and his generosity.

  It was the house that disturbed her. She was only familiar with the downstairs rooms, so for the first few days she kept getting lost on her way from the bedroom to the drawing room or library or wherever else she wanted to go. People found her wandering about, opening doors, looking for Nicolas. Or even a way out. Once she found herself climbing up a spiral stair that lead to the clock tower in the centre of the house. That wasn’t where she wanted to be at all. It smelled musty and sour, as though nobody ever went there, and she was terrified. She relinquished Rebecca and fancied herself as poor, mad Mrs Rochester, trailing about, disorientated to the point of insanity. They had sympathised with the first Mrs Rochester, Finn and herself. They had decided that Jane was no better than she should be; one of those small, steely women who always had a knack of getting their own way.

  Nick’s parents had already gone back to London, taking Annabel with them. Nick had decided to postpone their honeymoon until the spring.

  ‘There are so many wonderful places I want to show you, but I think you need time to settle down here first!’ She realised that he was right. She didn’t want to go anywhere just yet.

  The enormous, formal drawing room made Kirsty uncomfortable so Nick commandeered a parlour, tucked away at one side of the house, with an old sofa, plump cushions, threadbare rugs, a television, and an open fire. For the first few weeks, she
spent a lot of her time there, but all the same, she felt like a visitor in her own home.

  There were two black retrievers, called Mutt and Jeff, which slept so close to the fire that Nicolas had to nudge them out of the way with his foot.

  ‘Do you smell burning dog?’ she said. It became a joke between them. But there wasn’t a cat in the house, which surprised Kirsty. She wondered that the whole place wasn’t overrun with mice. She tried to bring Fish Face, but he wouldn’t stay. He turned his back on her and wailed horribly until she opened the back door. Then he just walked all the way back to Dunshee. It took him the best part of the day and he turned up at the farmhouse that night, looking scruffy and indignant, but none the worse for his expedition.

  ‘You could try locking him in or buttering his paws,’ said her grandfather.

  ‘Buttering his paws?’

  ‘He would lick it off and get used to the scent of his new home.’

  ‘Maybe they should do that to me as well.’

  She decided that such subterfuge wouldn’t be fair, so she left the cat at Dunshee. She would just have to go up and brush him from time to time, otherwise his fur would be all knots and she couldn’t rely on Alasdair to do it. Nicolas kept promising to get her a kitten but he always forgot. Perhaps he thought that Mutt and Jeff wouldn’t take kindly to an alien cat.

  Nicolas had installed her painting things in one of the spare bedrooms. At first, her work came slowly, but as the winter progressed, a slow transformation began to occur. She had discovered one reason, at least, for her sense of disorientation: she was pregnant. And just at first, the realisation of her condition threw her into an utter panic. Nicolas was worried by her fragility, but delighted by the news and his joy was contagious. She put all doubts out of her mind with an ease which surprised her, but perhaps the hormones flooding her body were to blame. Happiness crept up on her as her body changed and adapted to its new circumstances. In fact, she seemed to grow stronger and more creative as the pregnancy advanced, working joyfully, but in quite a different style from the way she had worked before: painting impressionistic studies of the island and the gardens that were memories of summer and full of light. She felt more contented than she would have believed possible, although she could not view the birth with equanimity. The house enfolded her too, sheltering her from all harm, though there were parts of it, attics and outhouses, that she hadn’t seen yet.