by Lewis, Gill
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What did she want, anyway?’ said Rob.
‘Who, Iona?’ I said. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It was nothing.’
‘We waited for ages but you never came back,’ said Rob. ‘Where d’you go? What were you doing?’
‘It wasn’t anything,’ I said irritably. ‘Just drop it OK?’
‘Hey, Callum,’ shouted Euan, ‘we need a goalie, are you playing?’
Euan kicked the ball to me but I let it roll past and into a ditch.
‘Or maybe you want to get back to your girlfriend?’ said Rob.
I grabbed him by his coat. ‘Shut up, Rob,’ I yelled.
Our faces were inches apart.
‘She’s a nutter,’ said Rob. ‘You said so yourself.’
Something inside me snapped.
I punched him, right in the face.
Rob scrambled up and launched at me. We sprawled over his bike, punching and kicking. I felt the crack of his bike computer splitting open beneath my back. Then Euan was there, pulling Rob away before the other boys could crowd around us.
‘Go, Callum,’ Euan said. He held Rob by the arm. ‘Just go.’
Rob and I glared at each other. I couldn’t tell if it was hurt or hate in his eyes, but I didn’t care. I turned and walked up the road out of the village and didn’t look back.
* * *
When I reached the loch, Dad’s Land Rover was parked on the far shore near the tree house. Iona was sitting on the bonnet drinking from a steaming mug.
A thick moustache of hot chocolate sat upon her top lip. ‘What’ve you done to your face?’ she said.
I wiped my sleeve along my mouth. It left a trail of blood, mud, and saliva. ‘Nothing,’ I said.
She passed me a paper tissue and I tried to clean most of it off. There was hammering and banging from the branches above.
‘Your dad thought our tree could do with a bit of improvement,’ said Iona.
‘You told him about it?’ I said.
Iona nodded. ‘He knows about the ospreys,’ she said, ‘so it makes no diff erence.’
I could just see Dad’s feet through the leaves. I thought at first the hammering might scare the ospreys, but when I looked across to the island I could just see the head of Iris poking up from the nest, watching us.
‘The ospreys think your dad’s a strange big bird,’ Iona laughed. ‘Have you seen what he’s doing up there?’
I climbed up Dad’s ladder into the tree. Wooden planks of all shapes and sizes were balanced in the branches. Graham and Hamish were up in the tree too. They’d built a wide platform support and were now building up the sides of the tree-house.
‘What d’you think, Callum?’ said Dad.
‘Really great,’ I said, looking around. And it was. Dad, Hamish, and Graham had built it around the main trunk. I could already see it was going to be huge. ‘I could live up here.’
‘That’s the general idea, Cal,’ said Graham. ‘It’s Mum and Dad’s way of getting rid of you.’
I grinned at him. He was just putting the hinges on the trapdoor in the base of the tree-house. ‘Thanks, Graham,’ I said. And I really meant it.
We stopped work for lunch. Dad drove us back to the farmhouse in the Land Rover, all squashed together along the front seat. A fine rain misted the windscreen and hid the hills from view. Iona stretched her bare feet on the dashboard and warmed her toes in the hot air from the vents.
‘Come on in,’ said Mum, ‘you’re all soaked, the lot of you.’
We all piled into the kitchen, our damp clothes steaming in the warm air.
‘You’ll stay for lunch, Hamish, won’t you?’ said Mum. ‘And what about you, Iona. Will you stay?’
Iona nodded. ‘Yes please, Mrs McGregor.’
‘Shall I ring your grandad?’ said Mum.
‘I will,’ said Iona. She took the phone out into the hall.
Mum turned to me. ‘That’s a fair nasty cut on your lip, Callum,’ she said.
I put my fingers to the split lip where Rob had punched me. It felt swollen and sore. ‘Fell off my bike,’ I said. I looked at her and could tell she knew it was a lie.
‘Go and clean yourself up, then,’ she said. ‘And wash your hands.’
As I went to the bathroom, I found Iona on the stairs with the phone in her hands.
‘You’ve not rung him, have you?’ I said.
‘Don’t tell your mum, will you?’
‘Won’t he wonder where you are?’ I said.
She shook her head and frowned.
‘He forgets things, does Grandad. Anyway, he’s probably asleep.’
For lunch Mum gave us roast lamb, roast potatoes, carrots, and peas and thick brown gravy. I thought I had a good appetite, but Iona had seconds of everything and then thirds. She even managed a huge bowl of Mum’s best treacle pudding and custard.
Hamish flopped down in the saggy sofa by the cooking range. He closed his eyes and folded his hands on his stomach. ‘That was so good,’ he groaned. ‘I won’t be able to move for a week.’
‘Aye, well, there’s not much point going anywhere,’ said Dad. ‘The rain’s set to stay.’
I looked out across the yard. Even the barn was hidden by a thick curtain of rain. Gusts of wind smattered the raindrops against the window. Not even the thought of going to see the ospreys was enough to make me want to go outside.
Iona and I packed the dishwasher, while Mum cleared the table.
‘I wish I lived on a farm,’ said Iona. ‘My grandad had a farm, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right,’ said Mum. ‘Your grandad and Callum’s granda knew each other well.’
Iona eyes widened. ‘Did they?’
Mum nodded. ‘They were friends and rivals. They both bred Scottish Blackface sheep and showed them at all the big shows.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.
Mum hung the wet tea-towels to dry. ‘I’ve got a box of Granda’s old photos up in the attic,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can find them.’
Iona and I sat at the kitchen table with our backs to the radiator and waited for her while she searched the attic.
‘Here they are,’ Mum said. She put an old cardboard box on the table. It smelt musty, of mice and mothballs. ‘No one’s looked at these for years.’
Mum pulled out big brown envelopes and looked inside. ‘There you go,’ she said with a big smile. ‘That’s the two of them, side by side.’
It was a black and white photo of an agricultural show dated 1962. There was a line of farmers holding sheep waiting to be judged.
‘Don’t they look young?’ said Mum. ‘That’s your grandad there.’
Iona stared into the photo. ‘He looks really happy there, doesn’t he?’
Mum smiled. ‘You can keep it if you like.’
Iona and I looked through more photos. There were lots of the farm and people in strange old-fashioned clothes. Even Mum didn’t know who some of them were.
I looked across at Iona. She was holding a photo in her hand. I could tell it was really old, it was brown and faded. I couldn’t get a clear view, but Iona’s eyes were shining.
‘You’re not going to believe this, Callum,’ she said, holding up the photo. ‘You’re really not.’
CHAPTER 14
‘Amazing,’ said Dad. ‘I never knew about this.’
‘Incredible!’ said Hamish.
I peered over Iona’s shoulder at the faded photo in her hand. It was a photo of a loch, our loch, dated 1905. There was the rocky island and a cluster of trees, not just pines but small wind-bent trees and bushes too. But there, unmistakably, on the tallest pine was a huge tangle of sticks. It was so obviously an eyrie, much bigger than the one Iris and her mate had built.
‘I can’t believe we’ve had ospreys on this farm before,’ said Dad, ‘over a hundred years ago.’
‘They must’ve been about the last,’ said Hamish. ‘There were no recorded nests at all in Sc
otland between about 1910 and the early 1950s.’
Mum shook her head. ‘I don’t know how people can shoot them, or steal their eggs.’
‘For private collections and for money,’ said Hamish. ‘Some people will do it today if given half a chance. Some people poison them because they think they take too many fish.’
‘That’s just sick,’ said Dad.
‘We’ve got to keep our nest secret,’ said Iona. ‘All of us.’
‘You’re right there,’ said Hamish. ‘Letting people see ospreys at protected reserves is important. But the only way to build up osprey numbers is at nests like this one, nests kept secret and hidden away.’
‘Well, I think Granda would be well pleased with you, Iona,’ said Graham with a grin. ‘We’ll make you an honorary member of the farm.’
You’d have thought Graham had given her a slice of the sun, by the way Iona smiled back.
‘Talking of grandads,’ said Mum, ‘I think your grandad will be worrying where you are.’
‘I’ll give you a lift home,’ said Hamish, ‘I ought to go.’
Mum packed Iona off with some thick socks and a fleece jacket I’d grown out of. She wrapped up half a fruit cake too. When Iona said no, Mum said it was too much for Dad to eat, said he was fat enough already. Dad winked at Iona and patted his belly and Iona laughed.
It didn’t stop raining that day. After Iona had gone I went to my bedroom and rummaged under my bed for an old scrapbook I was given a few years ago. I’d only put in a few monster cards I’d collected back then. I stripped them out and wrote in big letters ‘The Ospreys on our Farm’.
Maybe I could keep a record of them for other people in a hundred years’ time. And then I wrote in smaller letters, ‘The Diary of Iris’.
I logged onto my computer and typed in the code Hamish had given us for Iris. It was amazing. On Google Earth, it put her position exactly on the island on the loch. 17.00 GMT. Hamish said GMT was Greenwich Mean Time, London time. I looked out of the window and shivered. I knew Iris would be sitting on her eggs. There was no shelter for her there.
I wanted to write her position, her coordinates, in the scrapbook, but something stopped me. I just couldn’t do it. It was as if writing it out would somehow give away our secret. So I stuck in some photos that Hamish had given me and just wrote, ‘17.00 GMT. Nest site, Secret Location. Scotland.’
I lay back on my bed and listened to the rain. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself high on that eyrie. I tried to imagine the raindrops sliding across my oiled feathers and the sway of the eyrie in the wind coming down from the rain-hammered mountains.
8TH MAY
17.00 GMT
NEST SITE.
SECRET LOCATION. SCOTLAND
Iris spread her wings across the nest. The rain ran down her long flight feathers and soaked through the tangle of sticks to the dark rain-stained branches. The eggs were warm and dry beneath her, sheltered in their bed of moss and soft down feathers.
The fibres of the tree creaked and groaned as the gale thrashed against it. Iris could feel the changing patterns of air around her, and the pressure of the storm, deep and hollow. Her bones and chest ached with it. She gripped her talons into the knot of sticks, and pressed herself deeper against her clutch of eggs.
One foot was still sore. She flinched at the memory of the humans holding her. They had touched her and unfurled her wings. The boy had looked deep into her eyes and she had stared back, mapping the strange contours of his face.
Now Iris sat tight in the eyrie, in the howling wind and hurting rain. The valley was human-less again. The acrid breath of their machine had long blown away across the hillside.
Yet the boy remained in her memory, the boy who held her and eased her pain. He had given back her sky. Somewhere deep inside her, Iris folded the landscape of his face into the mountains, skies, and rivers of her soul.
CHAPTER 15
I was glad when the summer holidays started. It meant I could spend most of the time with Iona at the loch. Rob and I had hardly spoken. I’d offered him twenty pounds towards the bike computer that had broken in our fight, but he didn’t take it. He said he wished he hadn’t wasted his time picking a fight with a loser like me. I couldn’t be bothered with him, either. I did feel bad about Euan, though. Euan asked if he could fish on our loch, like he did each summer, but I put him off with some poor excuses. I didn’t want to risk anyone seeing the ospreys.
So Iona and I went to the tree-house most days. Dad and Graham had finished the house with Hamish’s help. Boards and planks of wood had been nailed together to build up the sides, and the roof was made from a piece of corrugated iron from an old pig pen. There were big draughty gaps we stuffed with sacking and tied with baler twine. Dad had put two stools next to the wide window with its wooden shutters that overlooked the loch and the mountains. He’d built a shelf and put in a big wooden trunk we used as a table and a store to keep our bird books and Iona’s paints and notebooks. Graham camouflaged the sloping roof with old ivy and dead branches, so it was almost impossible to see from the outside. It was perfect.
I hauled myself up through the trapdoor into the tree-house.
‘Did you remember the drawing pins?’ said Iona.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Better still, I’ve brought food. Mum made us some sandwiches. What d’you want drawing pins for, anyway?’
Iona swept her hand around the tree-house. ‘We’ve got to decorate it,’ she said. ‘Make it ours.’
‘What with?’ I said.
‘I’m going to stick up some of the sketches I’ve done, of the ospreys. Here,’ she said handing me a wodge of drawings. ‘This was when the chick was little.’
I looked at a drawing dated nineteenth of June. There was one scruffy chick sticking its head above the eyrie. It was only a couple of weeks old then. I remembered that day so clearly. It was the first time we actually got a glimpse of it. But we were also sad because we knew then that the other two eggs hadn’t hatched.
‘I can’t believe how much it’s grown since then,’ I said. I pinned the picture up on the wooden walls of the tree-house next to a later picture of the chick being fed by Iris.
‘And this is the one I’ve done today,’ said Iona. She held up a new painting dated second of August. It showed the chick stretching its wings. It was almost as big as its parents now and there wasn’t much room in the nest any more when it flapped about. Its feathers were still a mottled cream and brown, and its eyes were deep amber, not yellow.
‘Look,’ said Iona, pointing out of the window. ‘It’s having another go.’
We sat looking out across the loch. The eyrie was bright in the late morning sunshine. I reached into my bag for my binoculars.
‘I thought you said you brought sandwiches,’ said Iona. ‘I’m starving.’
I threw her a packet of sandwiches, propped my elbows on the window ledge and focused my binoculars on the eyrie.
The chick stood on the edge of the eyrie, flapping its huge wings, testing the wind. It lifted slightly off the nest, hovering just above it. We could hear the call of one of its parents in another tree, encouraging it.
‘Go on,’ whispered Iona.
It dropped down onto the eyrie again, standing right on the very edge. Then, as if it had made up its mind, it spread its wings and launched up into the air, followed by a downward plummet towards the loch.
I held my breath.
The chick beat its wings, flapping hard. It swooped up from the loch and flew in a wide arc up over the trees. Round and round it flew, above the woodland, flap, flap, flap, with its big wings, trying to keep airborne. We watched it try to land on a thin branch of a tree near the eyrie, but the branch bowed and bent beneath it. It took off again, flapping towards the eyrie this time. Its long gangly legs were outstretched and it wobbled in the air like a helicopter on a really windy day. It mistimed its landing, crashed into the nest and then sat up, ruffling its feathers back into place.
‘
Flying’s the easy bit,’ I laughed. ‘It’s the landing that’s difficult.’
Iona smiled. ‘Time for a new picture,’ she said. She reached into the trunk for her box of art stuff .
‘Where d’you get all those paints?’ I asked. She had more tins and pots than I’d ever seen her with before.
‘Mrs Wicklow was cleaning out the art room and dropped them round for my birthday,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know it was your birthday,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s next week,’ said Iona. ‘But I couldn’t wait to use the paints.’
Iona found a new sheet of paper and started sketching.
I glanced at the picture. I thought she’d do one of the chick’s first flight, but instead she was drawing Iris on a tree on the other side of the loch.
‘Hamish thinks she’ll set off to Africa soon,’ said Iona.
I looked out across the loch where Iris sat in a tall dead tree. She was bright against the dark woodland.
‘Iris always sits on that far tree now, doesn’t she?’ I said.
‘I think she looks sad,’ said Iona.
‘She’s a bird,’ I said. ‘How can she look sad?’
Iona shrugged her shoulders and kept working at her picture. ‘She does to me,’ said Iona. ‘She knows she can’t stay however much she wants to. She can’t help it. She’ll leave her chick and go.’
I laughed. ‘She won’t even think about it.’
Iona crumpled up her picture and flung it across the floor. She stormed down the hatch and away from the tree-house.
‘Iona,’ I called, but she had already disappeared into the trees.
I caught up with her by the river. She was sitting on a stone, hunched over, digging her penknife into something in her hand.
‘She’ll be back, Iona,’ I said.
Iona turned round. Tears streaked down her cheeks. ‘Will she?’
The gold locket lay open in her palm. Deep scratches were cut into the photo of her mother’s face.
I sat down close beside her. ‘Your ma will come back for you, Iona,’ I said.
