This Northern Sky (5 page)

Two whole hours! I’m going to be here all day at that rate. I’m suddenly shy, tongue-tied.

But I needn’t have worried. Everyone else talks practically non-stop. They talk about music, and books, and their friend Tim, who has a new job as some sort of sales rep for a publisher and so gets a company car. I work out that they are all students, apart from Finn (still at school, one year to go) and Tim. Piers is studying for a PhD in music and wants to be a composer. His twin, Jamie, plays lead guitar in a band. Their parents are retired now, but Joy was a scientist and Alex worked as an antiquarian bookseller, which explains why the Manse is full to bursting with books, old prints and paintings. It even
smells
of old things: musty, slightly damp.

They start discussing some of the jobs that need to be done now everyone’s here for the holidays.

‘We need to get the peat in,’ Joy says. ‘We’re already late. Most of the crofters did theirs way back in June. We’ve cut most of it, but it’s got to be brought back here and stacked so it will dry and be ready for winter. If everyone helps it won’t be so exhausting.’

‘Of course.’ Thea nods.

Joy seems to notice me for the first time. ‘You’re the girl we passed on the road the other day, aren’t you?’ she says. ‘You’ve all met already, then.’

‘Poor Kate didn’t stand a chance,’ Thea says. ‘We whisked her up and brought her here for the barbecue.’

‘You’re not an island girl though?’

‘No. Just on holiday,’ I say. ‘I hope it’s all right, me being here.’

Joy smiles. ‘Of course it’s all right. You are very welcome. It will be nice for Finn.’

Everyone keeps saying that. Why? I wonder.

Joy seems old for a mum. But then, she has grown-up children as well as Finn. But Mum does too, and Joy seems much older than Mum. Not just the grey hair and the glasses. Her clothes, perhaps. And her hands, and the way she speaks.

Alex comes downstairs. He watches everyone from the kitchen doorway. His eyes twinkle at me, as if he’s pleased I’m there too, but he doesn’t say much. Finn pours tea for everyone from a big brown pot. A marmalade cat sidles in and winds in and out of everyone’s legs under the table before jumping up and settling itself on Joy’s lap. Piers wanders off and a few minutes later the house is full of the sound of piano music: loud chords and impossibly intricate notes.

‘What are you going to cook on the barbecue?’ Joy asks.

‘Sausages, veggy kebabs, mackerel if Finn can catch some!’ Thea says.

Finn looks at me. ‘Want to come and catch fish?’

I’ve never been fishing before so I just watch. It’s cold, mind. I wrap myself up in the old blanket we brought from the house to sit on. You’re not supposed to make a noise when you fish, apparently, so we don’t talk. Every so often I forget, and ask Finn a question, and he answers very quietly. He’s too polite to tell me to shut up.

‘Do Alex and Joy live here all year round?’ I ask.

‘Only since last year, when they both retired. They bought the Manse for our holidays originally, way back when houses were cheap as chips.’

‘So do you come here every holiday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you get bored? Wouldn’t you like to see other places?’

Finn stares at me as if I’m crazy. ‘No. I’m never bored. I’d live here all the time if I had my way. I can’t wait to leave school and then I can.’

‘Where’s your school?’

‘London.’

‘That’s a very long way away!’

He takes a coloured spinner from the open box by his side and fixes it to the line.

‘I go to an ordinary comprehensive school,’ I tell him, even though he hasn’t asked. ‘What’s it like, boarding?’

‘Rubbish. A total nightmare, if you really want to know.’

I stop asking questions for a while.

I study his face in profile: serious, thin, fine-boned. His eyes are grey-blue and his hair dark, curling at the back along his neck. Pale skin. He seems perfectly at home, perched on the rocks, almost camouflaged in his big baggy jumper: hand-knitted flecked blue wool. He casts the line, and skilfully makes the spinner dance and zigzag like a tiny fish darting through the water.

‘We should have come down earlier,’ he says. ‘It’s best at high tide, catching mackerel off the rocks. This state of an ebb tide you need a boat really. We could go and get the boat I suppose . . .’

I remember what Mum said about the house parties and boats.
It looked fun
, she said.

‘I’ll take you out in it sometime, if you like,’ he says. ‘It’s just a wooden rowing boat, nothing grand.’

‘Is it dangerous,’ I say, ‘with all the rocks and the currents and tides and all that?’

‘Not if you know what you are doing,’ Finn says. ‘I’ve been coming here since I was a small child. We could go to one of the uninhabited islands, to get cockles. We do that every summer.’

I’m not exactly sure what cockles are. Shellfish, I guess, like in that old song: ‘
cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o
’. But I’m not going to show myself up by asking.

Finn suddenly springs into action – leaping up, winding in the line on the rod, flicking a thrashing, shiny fish on the stone. He unhooks it and hits it on the rock to kill it. It lies there, silver with beautiful markings along its back. He does this six times, until he has six gleaming mackerel of the right size to barbecue. Each time, it makes my eyes smart to watch the fish die. ‘The fish hardly suffer,’ Finn says when he sees me flinch. ‘They have a good life. It’s better than factory farming.’

I hear voices. Piers and Thea are making their way down towards us with baskets and bags of stuff. Thea waves. ‘Caught anything?’ she calls.

‘Six fish!’ I call back.

‘Excellent.’ Thea clambers down over the rocks and puts everything down while she takes off her shoes. She walks along the damp sand, her bare feet sinking in and leaving perfect footprints. I notice how pale and narrow her feet are: fine, thin toes with pale pink nails. ‘Come and help make the fire,’ she says to me. ‘We need driftwood; want to go and see if you can find some dry stuff?’

I take my own shoes off and walk along the top of the beach, picking up bits of wood. There isn’t much that’s dry. The wind’s blowing in off the sea. Small brown and white birds scurry along at the edge of the water, so fast they look funny: as if they are scooting along on roller skates. The waves roll in, lines of white breakers curling over and spreading on to the pale sand in loops of lace.

By the time I’ve walked along the whole length of sand and back, Piers and Thea have made a fireplace out of stones and have started the fire.

‘Thanks, Kate,’ Thea says as I dump my armful of wood. She feeds small sticks into the flames, adds bigger bits. I pull my collar up higher and hug my knees for warmth.

Piers and Finn thread chunks of onion and red pepper and mushrooms on to sticks. ‘It will be ages before the fire’s hot enough for cooking,’ Finn tells me. ‘Hope you’re not in a rush.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve got all day. And all evening. All week, in fact!’

He laughs. ‘Good.’

Piers hums a tune as he gets everything ready. I’m a bit in awe of him. He seems grown-up, older than Bonnie or Holly but he can’t be really. He reminds me of someone – that Hugh person on telly, I decide, who cooks outside like this, on a beach, with freshly caught fish and seaweed or whatever. He starts talking to Thea about friends, and films, and some book they’ve been reading about science and religion.

‘Are you too cold?’ Finn asks me after a while.

I am, but I don’t want to say I am. None of them seems the least bit bothered by the cold. I suppose they are used to it.

‘Want to run along the beach and back with me?’

‘OK.’

I go slowly to begin with, but it’s fun; a bit like being a child again. The wind whips my hair and the waves make such a racket as they crash on to the sand I can hardly hear what Finn’s saying.

I’m out of breath way before he is. ‘You go on,’ I say, and he does, in that loping stride he was doing the first time I saw him, pebbles spilling out of his pockets.

But he doesn’t just run on; he loops back to rejoin me, and we go on side by side together. ‘Seen the ringing stone yet?’ he asks me.

‘No. What is it?’

‘A lump of granite, from the Ice Age probably, brought here from a different island. Millions of years old. It’s covered in cup marks made by Bronze Age people. Some sort of pre-Druid religious rite, people think. To do with fertility, or blood sacrifice, or star charts or stone worship. No one has a clue really.’

‘I think there was something about it in that tiny museum,’ I say. ‘Where is it, exactly?’

‘Over on the east coast. You go along the machair for another two miles or so and then cross over to the other side of the island. There’s something extraordinary about it: one of those special places, you know? Where time seems to collapse: the past and the present come together.’

I look sceptically back at him. ‘Yes?’

He laughs. ‘Honestly! The look on your face! Anyway, it’s too far to go there now. We’ll go another time. Run back? I’ll race you.’

‘Absolutely not,’ I say. But I start running, to get a few seconds’ head start.

‘Hey!’ he shouts, and catches up. ‘That’s cheating!’

‘It was my only chance.’ I laugh. ‘And I’m not sorry!’

He matches his pace to mine and we run along the firm sand nearer the water.

I’m puffed out and hot by the time we’re only halfway back. We walk the rest of the way. He keeps stopping to look at things: a shell, an interesting pebble, a piece of unusual seaweed, a crab shell, the V-shaped marks made by a bird’s feet. I think, briefly, of Dad. Finn, like a younger version of Dad, or what Dad might have been like when he was sixteen, seventeen.

‘Stop there!’ Finn says. ‘Shut your eyes and hold out your hand.’

I do as he says. I feel something cool, damp in my palm. For a brief second, Finn’s warm hand closes around my cold one.

‘Now look.’

It’s just a pebble. A pretty pebble, still wet and shiny from the sea.

‘Thank you,’ I say. I slip it into my pocket for safe keeping.

Joy and Alex come down to the beach just as the fire is at the white-hot charcoal stage and the sausages are almost cooked: Finn’s laying the gutted fish side by side on the grill over the fire. The meat and fish spit hot fat into the fire and it smells amazing. Alex is carrying two camping chairs and a bottle of whisky; Joy’s brought rugs and glasses and plates. They’ve obviously done this a hundred times before; it’s nothing special to them, but for me it’s all new.

Joy wraps me in a big tartan rug. Alex offers me a glass of whisky. ‘For medicinal purposes. Your lips are blue with the cold.’

I take one sip to try it. It’s totally disgusting. I hand the glass back, spluttering. ‘No thanks! Too strong.’

‘Food always tastes better outside,’ Joy says, laughing and settling back into her chair with her plate on her lap.

‘You always say that!’ Piers opens another bottle of beer and passes one to Thea.

‘And it’s always true.’ Joy smiles. ‘Tuck in, everyone.’

Alex surveys the beach with binoculars. ‘Sanderlings,’ he says, ‘and a curlew sandpiper.’ He passes the binoculars to Finn.

I eat my food. Joy’s right: everything does taste delicious. I’m the happiest I have been for ages, wrapped in a tartan rug on a rock at the top of a huge sandy beach, watching the waves roll in. I join in the conversation when I can think of something sensible to say, but mostly I’m just quiet, taking it all in. No one bothers me, or pesters me with stupid questions, or makes a fuss.

‘We’ll give you a lift back, Kate,’ Piers says, when we’re packing everything up to take back to the house. ‘Just say when you want to go.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

Alex pulls an old-fashioned watch out of his jacket pocket. ‘Ten minutes to seven.’

I’ve been here for hours. I’d no idea. ‘I’d better go back straight away,’ I say. ‘But I don’t mind walking, honestly.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Piers says. ‘Of course I’ll drive you back. We’ll dump the stuff at home and then I’m all yours.’

Everyone walks back together to the Manse. Joy chats to me as we climb up over the grassy bank to the house. ‘You must come round whenever you want to,’ she says. ‘We keep an open house. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Absolutely,’ Piers says.

‘It must be a bit lonely by yourself, with both your sisters away,’ Joy says. She thinks she possibly remembers them, but it was a long time ago, and there have been so many friends, over the years: people on their holidays, children on the beach . . .

I don’t want to leave without thanking Finn, but the kitchen’s full of people and Piers is grabbing the keys for the jeep and when I look round to say goodbye, he’s disappeared.

Thea grabs her coat. ‘I’ll come for the ride too.’ She goes to the kitchen door and calls up the stairs. ‘Finn? You coming to take Kate home?’ But he doesn’t answer, and Piers is already walking out of the back door.