“Oh...” She did not know what to say to that, but it was natural, perhaps, that Ronald should have asked for her. “I would like to see him as soon as I can. Has he seen Mr. MacLean yet?”
He nodded.
“For a couple of minutes yesterday, before Ginger went back with the second ambulance plane. They sent one out immediately, of course, to pick up the patient you were going for. It’s wonderful service,” he added. “Absolutely essential for the Isles.”
“Everything runs so efficiently,” Alison observed. “We are alerted at the hospital immediately a call comes through to Renfrew, and by the time we get there pilots and engineers and crash crews and air traffic control are all at their posts. They are pulled out of bed if it’s a night call, and the various reactions can be quite amusing! The point is, though, that the Heron can be converted in fifteen minutes—seats taken out and the ambulance equipment installed—and it’s all done with the best will in the world, even on a Saturday night!”
“You’re keen on the work?” he suggested.
“Who wouldn’t be?” She looked down at her bandaged arm and a small, sickening fear rose in her heart. “I hope this won’t make any difference,” she said. “I know I shall be out of action for as long as it takes to mend, but I want to go back as soon as possible. I suppose the hospital knows?” she added.
“I sent all the details back with Ginger.” He smiled. “I think he was more than glad to go. I’ve never seen a man so scared of peace and quiet. He informed me that he would go slowly mad in a place like this.”
“He loves the city and the sound of a plane’s engines in his ears,” Alison smiled, thinking of Ginger with a new warmth. “That’s what he asks from life, and, after all, he’s doing a good job of work. It’s not just the bright lights he covets. He says he likes to feel the pulse of life which, for him, is the heart beat of a big city like Glasgow or London.”
“And for you?” he asked unexpectedly.
Alison flushed sensitively.
“I’ve heard it in the hospital,” she confessed. “Sometimes standing at the gates, when I’ve been alone.”
“Yes, I understand that,” he said, but almost immediately he turned towards the road, as if this also might be the end of a confession.
“How long have you known Gowrie?” he asked as they walked slowly back towards the lodge.
“Not very long.” Alison was thinking of her first meeting with Ronald Gowrie and the kind of person she had been warned to expect. “I think one has to fly with the people on the ambulance to get to know them properly,” she added. “Ronald pretends to be the most hard-boiled of cynics, but he’s really kind and generous underneath it all. He’d go out with the ambulance if he were dying. It’s a sort of sacred trust with him.”
“I wondered what it had to do with Heimra,” he mused.
“With Heimra? What do you mean?”
“I think his ambulance work is all wrapped up with—shall we say his love for the Islands in general and Heimra in particular?” He hesitated, as if debating whether or not he should tell her all he knew, and then he said quite simply, “He talked quite a lot last night—in a delirium, of course, but it revealed the man. I knew, of course, that he had been born on Heimra Mhor, but it is over six years since he left the island to live in Glasgow.”
Alison turned to look at him, conjuring up the picture of Ronald Gowrie during her first flight over the Minch, hearing his voice quite plainly as he said:
“There’s a saying that once you have landed on one of these Hebridean islands it will claim you forever. You will always come back.”
“I suppose it’s a question of belonging,” she said, her throat suddenly tight. “I know I don’t belong—not really, because our family connection is two generations away—but even I have felt it. Just now, for instance, up there on the headland watching the puffins...”
Her voice faltered because that was not what she had meant to tell him. It was all too personal, too much as if she wanted to stay.
“Do you think that a missing generation or two makes a difference?” Fergus Blair asked. “ ‘And still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland. And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!’ A Canadian wrote that, and he had never been to Scotland. He was, as you put it, two generations away.”
Something rose in Alison’s throat which choked back speech, and her eyes were suddenly misted by tears.
“I think you’re right about Captain Gowrie,” she told him after a while. “He doesn’t know it, but he has wanted to come back—to belong.”
“I wonder what he will do when he gives up flying,” Blair mused. “That’s why I offered him the job on Heimra Mhor. He would be a local man, even after six or seven years. The islanders have long memories.”
“It would be beneficial to you,” Alison agreed, “but I don’t think he would come. I don’t think he could come.”
She was remembering his brother and the former laird’s marriage to the girl Ronald Gowrie had loved; remembering, too, how violently he had disowned that love, vowing that he would never forgive Margot Blair for what she had done to him—never as long as he lived.
“I’d like him to change his mind,” Fergus said, “especially now that he won’t be piloting a plane for some considerable time. B.E.A. are very particular about the physical fitness of all their pilots. They demand a hundred percent. At the present moment the injury to Gowrie’s head makes it extremely difficult for me to forecast whether or not he will ever fly again.”
“Oh, no!” Alison gasped. “It’s his life. The one thing he lives for. He’s like Ginger in that respect,” she rushed on, almost as if she were making some personal appeal to him on Ronald’s behalf. “It’s only when he’s at the controls that he is really happy. The rest, the cynicism and worldliness, are all a sham, a sort of useful mask which he wears to safeguard himself.”
She hesitated, realizing that he was looking at her intently, wondering, no doubt, what her defence of Ronald Gowrie really meant in terms of personal attachment, but all he said was: “You know him better than I do, of course, and in any case, there’s plenty of time for a hard-and-fast decision about the future. He will be here for many weeks.”
She walked on a little way without speaking, envying Ronald as she felt the cool, soft breath of Heimra caressing her cheek, and aware of a sadness and a longing such as she had never known before. It was something born of the island from which she could never break away and from which, in this moment of near-ecstasy, she had no wish to escape.
If she could have halted time itself, if she could have put her hand into Fergus Blair’s and remained with him in that enchanted spot forever, her life would have been complete.
Shaken by the knowledge, by its suddenness and utter unexpectedness, she could not talk of banal things. They walked in silence along the narrow, twisting island road, between the fields starred with spring’s first gift of flowers and the lonely machar, until they reached the lodge with its white muslin curtains blowing in the wind from the sea.
“I hope you will be comfortable here,” Fergus said. “If there is anything you want please ask Mrs. Cameron for it. She is invariably kind and interested in all we do here.”
He had not invited her to Garrisdale House. Perhaps she should not have expected the invitation, but they had talked about his work and she felt disappointed. She supposed that she had even hoped that he might find something for her to do there while she remained on the island.
Yet did he mean her to remain on Heimra for any length of time? He had not sent her back with the Air Ambulance, but that was because she had not been really fit enough to go. Now, perhaps, it would be different. He had said that Mrs. Cameron would look after her, telling her pointedly, perhaps, that she must remain at the lodge.
He had also said that she could visit Ronald Gowrie, however, and Ronald was at Garrisdale. Then, too, there was Andrew. He could not possibly object to her meeting Andrew again.
“I’ll tell Captain Gowrie that
you’re coming to see him,” he said when they reached the lodge gates. “It will give him something to hang on to.”
“When can I come?” she asked, flushing at his suggestion of a deeper link between her and Ronald than actually existed. “I know he has been badly hurt and should have absolute rest, and I know all this must be extra work for you,” she added swiftly. “I’d do anything to help where I could,” she offered.
He hesitated, as if he were half inclined to take her at her word, and then he said abruptly:
“You’ve been badly shaken up. You ought to have a period of rest yourself, and your arm isn’t going to be a great deal of use to you for several days at least. You’ll begin to feel the effect of the bruising quite soon,” he warned. “I don’t think I could let you attempt to nurse anyone yet—not even Captain Gowrie,” he added dryly.
“I feel quite useless,” Alison declared, wishing that she could have helped with the children, but unable, somehow, to ask that of him in the present circumstances. “I really can get about quite well.”
“You’re bound to feel hampered by that ‘strait jacket’ I’ve inflicted on you,” he reminded her with a smile as he turned away. “I’ll send down word when you can see Captain Gowrie. Andrew will be only too pleased to bring you a message!”
Alison stood in the lodge doorway until his tall figure had passed out of sight round a bend in the moss-grown drive with the words of an old Highland melody which her mother used to sing echoing in her ears.
“Hushed be thy moaning, lone bird of the sea,
Thy home on the rocks is a shelter to thee:
Thy rest is the angry wave...”
How did it go after that? She could not remember. Only the closing words of every stanza rose and filled her heart. “Ho-ro, Mairi dhu, Turn ye to me!”
The lovely, haunting notes held all the essential sadness of the Isles, and the words were the words that faltered tremblingly on her own parted lips.
“Ho-ro, Mairi dhu, Turn ye to me.”
CHAPTER SIX
IT was after three o’clock before the message for which she waited came to the lodge.
“Here come Master Andrew,” Mrs. Cameron observed, looking out through the kitchen window, “as fast as he’s able! Poor bairn!” She reflected with a tear in her voice, “he’s sadly handicapped, but it just makes him all the dearer to us and to Mr. Blair.”
And his mother? Alison wanted to ask about Margot Blair, but something about the rigid back of the woman standing at the window forbade her. Kirsty Cameron had never mentioned Gavin Blair’s widow, had not, in fact, seemed to take her into consideration when she had been discussing Garrisdale House a moment or two ago. Alison had gathered that the “big house”, as Kirsty called it, was run on the lines of a home rather than a hospital, with a resident house-mother to look after the children’s welfare, and various other people to make it run as smoothly as possible. Margot, if she ever came to the island, apparently took no part in its busy life.
“Mrs. Cameron,” Alison found herself asking almost breathlessly as she waited for Andrew to reach the door, “is Mr. Blair married?”
“My goodness, no! He’s got enough on his plate without that,” Kirsty decided firmly. “Unless,” she augmented her forthright statement, “he was to get the right sort of wife. But that would only be an added problem for him at the present moment,” she said grimly. “He’s got more than himself to think about just now.”
Andrew burst in at the half-open door before she could add any more.
“I’ve to find Nurse Lang and bring her up to the house!” he cried before he noticed Alison, and then, when he did, he came rather shyly across the brightly checked linoleum to put his hand into hers. “You’re to come,” he said. “My uncle is waiting for you.”
Alison caught up her cloak, which she had left ready on the chair beside the door.
“Do you remember hoping that you could show me Heimra Beag, Andrew?” she asked. “Well, now I’m here and I’m very happy!”
She could say such things to the child, she mused as they went out into the sunshine together. The things she could never admit to anyone else.
“I can show you the birds an’ where they make their nests, an’ the seals who have their babies on the rocks, an’ the goats we keep to get their milk and make mohair from their coats!” he offered all in one breath. “Oh! I can show you everything now!”
She could not tell him that she had already been to the bird sanctuary, with Blair himself. She could not disappoint him in that way, and she could go again, many times, perhaps, and each time would hold a new experience.
“How far is it to Garrisdale?” she asked.
“A long way. I’ve been hurrying,” he pointed out, still breathing hard. “We could go a shorter way, but we’re not allowed because it’s past Monkdyke.”
“Monkdyke?” Alison repeated. “Is that another house, Andrew?”
“It’s where my mother lives,” the child announced solemnly. “Nobody is allowed to go there—except my Uncle Fergus.”
Alison was aware of a sort of twofold shock. Firstly at the knowledge that Margot Blair actually lived on the island, and secondly that Gavin Blair’s widow had forbidden her present home to her own child.
“Surely that isn’t the case, Andrew?” she said. “Perhaps your mother has been sick and needs a little rest before she has you back to live with her again.”
“No.” He shook his head, distressed that she should not believe him. “No one ever goes to see her from Garrisdale. I think it’s because she doesn’t want to look at us,” he added with almost adult perception and a vague, hurt sadness.
Alison found that she could not answer him. The horror in her heart was swamped now by an all-consuming anger which made speech difficult. How could any woman do such a thing, especially to a child like Andrew? How could Margot Blair stay here, near to him in distance, yet steadfastly refusing him a mother’s love and protection? It seemed that she had shut him out of her life completely for some utterly worthless reason of her own, and that Andrew knew it.
It was difficult to deceive a child, and quite often a physically handicapped child had a more acute sense of betrayal than a normal one. Andrew knew himself unwanted and was bewildered by it, but he would have chafed under the fact far more if it had not been for Fergus Blair.
His Uncle Fergus was a god to him. There was nothing he did or said which was not the absolute law.
“Perhaps we could hurry through the Monkdyke grounds,” she suggested when they came to a bend in the path, and she saw that his feet were lagging.
“I get tired sometimes,” he admitted, “when I’ve come a long way.”
Alison looked down at his thin, inadequate little legs, and made a swift decision.
“Why shouldn’t we go the shorter way?” she said. “If it cuts off a lot of the drive up to Garrisdale.”
“Oh, it does!” Andrew murmured with relief. “And perhaps it won’t matter so much going there when I’m with you.”
Whether it mattered or not, Alison decided aggressively, they were going that way. It might cut off as much as a mile.
“There’s no hurry,” she told Andrew, who was still quite red in the face from his exertion. “Captain Gowrie may be asleep.”
“Does everybody grown up sleep in the afternoon?” he asked interestedly, although he seemed to be keeping a wary eye open in case they might be intercepted on their way through the Monkdyke shrubberies. “Mrs. Pollock does. She’s our housemother,” he hurried on to explain, “and she knows all the stories about the Islands—about the fairy hillocks and the Water Horse, who comes up out of the lochs to feed with the other cattle in the fields; and the fairy cows who are good to the people they like. Once Mrs. Pollock’s mother had a brownie about the house,” he added solemnly. “He came and did all the work for her because she left the cream off the milk for him on the kitchen table. He did the work when they were all asleep in their beds at night, but if they
’fended him an’ he got in a huff, he broke things. Things like cups and bowls and glass dishes that they wanted to keep just kept falling out of their hands!” He paused for breath, standing in the middle of the grassy path, rather like a brownie himself, his eyes fixed solemnly on Alison’s face. “It would be a very good thing if Mrs. Cameron had a brownie,” he observed thoughtfully. “She has to work very hard.”
“Perhaps the brownies have all left the island now,” Alison suggested. “Did Mrs. Pollock have hers on Heimra Mhor?”
“No. She came here when she married Mr. Pollock, and he died. She hasn’t got Mr. Pollock to look after her now. Just Uncle Fergus.”
Alison smiled.
“Your Uncle Fergus seems to be indispensable to a good many people,” she murmured, knowing that he would not understand what she meant. “Are the grounds round Garrisdale as lovely as this, Andrew?” she asked as they walked on. “With all these beautiful rhododendrons coming into flower?”
“Garrisdale is bigger than Monkdyke. There’s an awful lot of grass and daffodils.”
Alison found herself wondering more and more about the forbidden Monkdyke. Was it the Dower House of the estate? She had not expected to find two houses on Heimra Beag.
“There it is,” Andrew exclaimed, hurrying a little. “Over there among the trees.”
Behind a screen of regal pines a small, square house stood overlooking a white-sanded bay. It was the loveliest house Alison had ever seen, and the view from all its windows would be unsurpassed. It had the look of a house that had been loved and gently cared for, and yet, in some ways, it looked dead.
No smoke rose from its tall chimneys, and the main door, which had been painted a gay yellow, was securely closed against intrusion, which was strange in itself in the Highlands of Scotland, where most doors were left hospitably open.
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