‘Why so soon, Kirsty? Why did you marry him so soon?’
I thought you had gone for good. I thought, why not?’
‘Jesus!’
‘Nothing mattered to me after that. For a little while I hoped that you would come back, but then I realised you wouldn’t, because that’s the way you are, because that’s how ruthless you are. It was as though somebody had switched off all the lights inside me.’
There was a long pause. Finn seemed to be steeling himself to speak. At last, he said, ‘You’re still not telling me the truth, are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Kirsty! I have eyes in my head. I can see!’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Fear seized her, a terror so acute and all encompassing that she could only gaze at him, rigid with apprehension.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have given me that photograph for Christmas, Kirsty. If I suspected it before, I knew for sure as soon as I looked at it. She’s the image of me, isn’t she?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘But Nick came to your rescue as usual, and you took the easy way out. Poor bastard. I don’t suppose he knew what he was letting himself in for. I suppose he still doesn’t. I suppose you’re deceiving him, too.’
She gazed at him, shaking her head.
‘Still lying?’ he said. ‘To me and to yourself! Jesus. If I’d known...’
‘Would that have made you stay? Would it have solved anything?’
‘It might!’
‘I don’t think so. Not if you were so set on going.’
‘Ah but I’m sick of it all, sick of the deceit and the misery. You’ve brought this on yourself, Kirsty.
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ she repeated stubbornly. She couldn’t let this happen. And to her relief, he seemed to capitulate.
‘Have it your own way. Keep pretending. Even though she’s the image of me. India. A wee cuckoo in his nest!’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘I’m surprised he doesn’t see it. Your Nicolas. But I suppose we only see what we want to see. So what now, Kirsty? What now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s not too late.’
‘I still want you for my friend.’
‘Fuck that!’ he said, furiously. ‘Friendship? What good is your friendship to me?’
‘But nothing’s the same any more. And there are the girls to consider. I’m a wife and mother now.’
‘Indeed you are.’
‘It’s too late. You have to see that it’s too late for us to be anything but friends, Finn. ’
‘You mean you don’t care to be around me any more.’
‘I want to be with you all the time.’
‘Then do something about it.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Because you love Nicolas? Say it! Say you love Nicolas and you don’t want to leave him.’
‘I love my husband very much and I can’t possibly leave him. It would break his heart. Like you broke mine.’
‘Come home with me. Now. Come back to Dunshee.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because too many other people would get hurt. And besides…’
‘Besides what?’
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Of what?’
‘I’m afraid of the way you love me. Afraid of what it might do to both of us.’
He switched on the engine.
‘I’ll take you back to your car.’
‘What are we going to do, Finn ?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’ he said angrily, and then didn’t speak again until they reached her car, parked in a muddy lay-by at the side of the main road. He stopped, leaned over and opened the passenger door.
‘Get out.’
‘Finn!’
‘For fuck’s sake Kirsty, will you just get out and leave me alone.’
She got out and he drove away immediately, leaving her in the road. She got into her own car, turned on the engine and ran the heater to clear the misted windscreen before she could drive safely back to Ealachan.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
A day or two later, when the winds had abated and Nicolas had managed to get home to the island, he sat her down and said, ‘Darling, we have to have a serious talk.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because things can’t go on like this. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. Not good at all. I think we’re going to have to offload the whole bloody island. Certainly this place.’
‘This place?’
‘Well. Ealachan. We really need the money.’
She was confused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Sell the place,’ he said. ‘Realise some capital. You know? Selling off the farm and the other places wasn’t nearly enough.’
‘But where will we live?’
‘There’s always Maida Vale. There’s plenty of room. Mum and dad are rattling around that big house anyway.’
‘Then why don’t you sell that?’ She thought about the tall house with its rooms stuffed with brown furniture and brown paintings.
‘Couldn’t do that. Need some sort of a base in London. We all do, Annabel included.’
‘Couldn’t it be a smaller base?’
‘I can’t throw my poor old father out of his home can I?’
No, but you could do it to my grandad, she thought.
‘Your father always liked this place much better than London.’
‘Maybe so but he’s not fit to travel nowadays, is he? And in any case, he doesn’t remember where he is from one day to the next.’
Malcolm had become vague and forgetful. He spent all his time up in the nursery at Maida Vale, playing with his collection of pond yachts, rigging and rerigging them, arranging them in little flotillas. He had even been known to fill up one of the cast iron baths and sail them up and down. ‘Lee-oh!’ he said. ‘Going about!’ He seemed profoundly happy. There were times when Kirsty envied him.
‘We need to do something fairly drastic, and offloading this place is the most realistic option. It was always a luxury. Now it’s become one we can’t afford.’
‘What about me?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. It’ll do you good, being in London. We could get you into more of the galleries down there. Annabel would help.’
‘What will I paint?’
‘Well, whatever you like, darling.’
‘This is what I paint. This place.’
‘But you could always paint something else, couldn’t you?’
‘No. I don’t want to paint something else. This place is my inspiration. I can never have enough of it. Never come to the end of it. Never!’
She saw that he was looking at her with profound scepticism and knew that he didn’t understand, would never understand what drove her.
‘Nicolas?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is about more than selling Ealachan, isn’t it? It’s about your parents, too.’
‘To some extent. My mother could do with a bit of help with dad. Annabel can’t always be there. She has her own business to see to.’
‘And what about my grandad?’
‘He has Finn now, doesn’t he? Worked out rather well that.’
‘Will you be staying at home to help with your father? Or will you be taking off to the States at every available opportunity?’
Sometimes she suspected that it wasn’t only business interests that took Nicolas over to the States so often. But how could she complain? ‘Pots and kettles, Kirsty’ that’s what her mother would have said. ‘Pots and kettles.’ And yet she had done nothing wrong, nothing except renew an old friendship.
She saw him colour up. ‘We do have business interests over there. In fact it’s our best bet for solvency. But if you don’t want to help with dad, we can always get a nurse in.’
‘Christ, Nicolas, I wouldn’t mind sailing his
pond yachts with him, or whatever else he wants to do. It isn’t that at all.’
‘Well then’
She said nothing. She was trapped. One way or another, he would remove her from Finn’s influence. Panic was succeeded by anger. If once she opened her mouth, the words would spill out and she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. But what could she say that wouldn’t sound unreasonable.
India was due home for the Easter holidays in less than a week. Nicolas had been in Edinburgh on business and was planning to make a detour to St Andrews, pick her up from school and bring her to the island with him. Flora had been back at the village school for the past month, but was still looking peaky. Annabel had begged to be allowed to take her out of school a few days before the official start of the holidays, and fly her off somewhere warm.
‘Why not?’ said Kirsty, conscious that her husband would not approve. School attendance was a point of principle with him, though Kirsty and Annabel had no such scruples. Besides, this would leave Kirsty alone at Ealachan for a blissful few days. She felt guilty at how much of a relief it was to be spared the demands of her immediate family.
Her grandfather was confined to the house with a heavy cold and consequent flare-up of his arthritis – not so bad that he needed constant attention, but too uncomfortable for him to do more than sit in front of the television with a blanket over his knees. Sensing that he wanted a little loving care, she loaded a few treats into the car and drove up to Dunshee. Finn was out and about on the farm, although a young man called Dave, much more efficient than Billy, came up from the village to help nowadays. Finn had no intention of taking on the full burden of the work again but realised that most of it was well beyond Alasdair’s strength.
Kirsty went into the kitchen and found her grandfather where Finn had left him that morning, huddled in a chair beside the range, with the radio and yesterday’s newspaper beside him, a half drunk mug of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives on the table. A fat tabby cat, Fish Face’s real successor, was asleep on a cushion on the opposite chair, its body making a perfect circle. It opened one eye but didn’t raise its head as she came in. She went over and kissed the top of her grandad’s head where the white hair was thinning. The shiny pink scalp beneath seemed very vulnerable. He had been such a big strong man; now he had shrunk, his limbs folding in on themselves. He had been a part of her life for so long. What would she do without him?
‘How are you?’ she asked him.
‘Och, not so bad, lass. Not so bad.’
‘I’ve brought you some fruit cake. It isn’t like mum’s but it’s pretty good all the same. And whisky and honey. I know how much you like a hot toddy.’
‘It’s you yourself that will cheer me up. So sit down and tell me all the news.’
She shooed the cat off the cushion. It went and sat in the hearth, with its back to her, hunching its shoulders and twitching its tail indignantly. She talked to him about India and Flora, which was chiefly what he meant by ‘the news.’ Then she pottered about the room, singing to herself, making ham sandwiches with mustard for their lunch. It was soothing to be here again, working quietly in what she still thought of as her kitchen. She had always disliked the kitchen at Ealachan with its stone floor and banks of gloomy wooden cupboards, but Nicolas had been disinclined to change it. Besides, there had always been somebody else to do the cooking. Now, as she sliced down through the layers of brown and pink and yellow, she had a moment of pure happiness.
‘Oh it’s so nice to be back!’
‘It’s good to have you here.’ She turned round to see Finn, standing in the kitchen doorway, taking off his wellington boots, sliding out of a scuffed jacket. He was wearing a baggy sweater that seemed to be unravelling at neck and cuffs, and a pair of faded jeans, not fashionably faded, just old. However else he may have changed, he still didn’t care about his clothes. He kept them clean, but that was it.
‘Are those for me as well?’ he asked, looking at the sandwiches.
‘Of course they are,’ said Alasdair. ‘She’s made a great pile of them. You sit yourself down and get stuck in!’
They sat cater-corner at the kitchen table. Alasdair stayed where he was, with a tray on his lap.
‘He’s always trying to feed me up,’ said Finn. ‘He keeps telling me there isn’t enough meat on my bones.’
‘You seem fine to me.’ But it was true that he had lost a bit of weight. She suspected that sometimes he just forgot to eat. She reached out and touched his arm, above the elbow, and was shocked by the dangerous flicker of sensation that passed between them. She wondered if he felt it too.
Their eyes met and again she felt a frisson of anxiety. When they were young, she had always been confident that she could banish his dark moods. Feisty Kirsty, walking in where even angels might fear to tread. Now, she was not so sure. He had left her once before. What if he left again? And then she thought that if Nicolas had his way, it was she herself who would be leaving.
‘This is just like old times,’ she said.
‘Where are they?’ he asked her abruptly. ‘Your lot, down there?’
‘They’re all away. Nicolas and India will be back later in the week. Annabel’s taken Flora off for a break.’
‘How do you bear it, Kirsty? Living in the same house as that family?’
‘Don’t be silly. They’re my family. I love them. And they’re all very nice to me so I expect they love me too.’ But she knew that he meant Nicolas. How could she bear living with Nicolas?
He finished his sandwiches and drank his tea in near silence. It wasn’t a sullen silence. He just seemed disinclined to argue with her. Afterwards, she cleared away the dishes into the sink.
‘Leave those,’ he told her. ‘I’ll do them later.’
Alasdair was sneezing so badly by this time that when she suggested an afternoon nap, he agreed. She took him upstairs and straightened the bed for him while he got into his striped pyjamas. He was shivering and she laid a hand on his forehead.
‘You’re running a bit of a temperature. No point in you getting dressed again. You stay here and I’ll bring you up some supper later on.’
‘Are you staying?’ he asked, hopefully.
‘I might as well. There’s nobody down at Ealachan. No need for me to go back there till later. I might see if Finn fancies a walk. Then come back and cook something for us all. Would you like that?’
‘I’d like it fine. I’d like it just fine. It would be like old times.’
She made sure that he was comfortable, drew the curtains, switched off the lamp and left him in peace. He was snoring, almost before she was out of the room.
In the kitchen, Finn was waiting for her, leafing impatiently through the day-old newspaper.
‘Are you going?’ he asked.
‘No. I thought I might stay for a bit, if you don’t mind.’
‘Mind?’ he echoed.
‘Well then, do you fancy a walk?’
‘Where?’
‘Hill Top Town.’
‘Will he be alright?’ He gestured upwards.
‘He’ll be fine. He’s fast asleep already. You could ask Dave to look in on him in an hour or so. Take him some tea.’
‘I could do that. Yes.’
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
They clambered up the rocks behind the farmhouse. Above them, skylarks soared and sang. It was the best time of the year for walking, before waist-high bracken obliterated pathways and provided a breeding ground for flies. A handful of lambs in the field near the farm were playing King of the Castle on a heap of rocks and turf.
Finn soon pulled ahead of her.
‘Wait for me!’ she called.
He paused in his stride, waited for her to catch up. ‘You’re not as fit as you once were!’
‘You’re right.’ She was breathless with the effort of the climb, her chest heaving.
‘You used to be able to outrun me on this hill any day of the week, Kirsty Galbreath.’ He would never call her by her
married name.
‘I know I did.’ Her mouth was open, snatching at air. ‘I know. I should take more exercise. I sit or stand and paint. But I don’t walk enough these days.’
‘You should come up here more often. Work up here if you like.’
‘Don’t think Nicolas would like that.’
‘Fuck Nicolas!’ he said, with sudden vitriol. ‘Oh. I forgot. You already do.’
She stood still, looking up at him. There was a pain in her chest that wasn’t entirely due to over-exertion. ‘That was uncalled-for.’
‘I’m sorry. But you’re so fucking complacent about it all sometimes.’
‘Complacent?’
‘Yes.’ He reached down, grasped her by the forearm and hauled her up to stand beside him. She rubbed at her arm where his fingers had left red streaks, like the Chinese burns they used to give each other when they were young, gratuitously cruel, seeing who would snatch his or her arm away first. The farm was behind and below them. To their left was the high summit, with the round eminence of Hill Top Town. In front of them the land was folded into ridges, scattered with big grey boulders, sloping away to end abruptly in a vertical drop to the sea. To their right, the rest of the island was spread out like a green and brown quilt, embroidered with sulphurous patches of whin.
‘Don’t think’ he said with sudden vehemence, ‘Don’t think that I’ll put up with it forever. I know you take me for a fucking fool, Kirsty. Doling out your crumbs of kindness now and then and congratulating yourself on how well you’re managing things. How well you’re managing me!’
For a moment, she couldn’t think of a thing to say in response, but then resentment came to her aid.
‘You’re not telling me you’ve been celibate all this time! Because I won’t believe you.’
‘I didn’t get married, did I?’
‘You went away and left me with never a word.’
‘I’ve tried to explain why I did that.’
‘But not even a postcard to tell me you were alive. So what in God’s name did you expect, Finn? Did you expect my life to grind to a halt, because you weren’t there? Did you really go for my sake, or just to fuck me up so that I’d be as hopeless as yourself? What the hell did you expect?’
Bird of Passage Page 30
