The Corncrake is the story of Ceit Galbreath, brought up on her grandfather’s Scottish island farm and Darragh Martin, a young Irish farm worker, traumatised by his unhappy childhood. But Ceit must move away from home to study and the threads that have bound these two friends so closely together begin to unravel. When family tragedy destroys Ceit’s hope of happiness with Darragh, it seems that only her ambitions as an artist can give her the fulfilment she seeks. But Ceit’s work is inextricably tied up with her love, not just for her home, but for Darragh, who comes and goes like the mysterious corncrake, which visits the island every summer.
When Ceit’s grown up daughter India, a successful musician, returns to the island after her mother’s death, she must unravel the story of a relationship which has a greater significance for herself than the rest of her family realises.
The Corncrake spans the years from the 1950s to the present day. It has been compared to The Bridges of Madison County: an accessible story with strong characters and a powerful sense of place, it is a lyrical exploration of a passionate attachment that will remain stronger than death itself.
CHAPTER ONE
The last time India saw Darragh Martin, he frightened her so much that she knew there was nothing to be done except let him be. She had a gig in Oban, a festival of Celtic music, and on impulse she had made the long trip to the island. It was February and the Sound was very rough. She felt sick on the ferry, so her first port of call was the village shop where she bought some biscuits and a bottle of dry ginger (her mother’s cure) to settle her stomach, and the elderly woman who worked there recognised her. She had known India’s mother when she was a wee girl, and Darragh for as long as he had been coming to the island. She had sold five and ten penny ‘mixtures’ –small pokes of sweets – to India and her sister Flora, when they were children, and now she seemed delighted to see India, if slightly overwhelmed by her growing celebrity.
‘I miss your mother,’ she confided. ‘I miss seeing her cheerful face around the village.’
‘I miss her too. We all do.’
‘It was good to see her so happy. Her and…’ the woman hesitated, uncomfortably aware that what she was about to say might sound tactless.
‘Her and Darragh.’ India finished the sentence for her. She was long past pussyfooting around the idea of her mother and Darragh.
‘But it was disturbing as well, you know,’ the woman continued. ‘It was so….’ she paused, searching for the right word. ‘So exclusive. As if they had no time, no mind for anyone else in the whole world. You would see them walking down the road to the village together. She would always be turning to look up into his face, looking at him as though she could never have enough of the sight of him.’
She halted. ‘It must have been hard on you lassies. I always thought it must have been hard on you.’
India wanted her to go on talking, needing to know. What had once been a source of resentment had, as she had grown older, become intensely interesting. But then, she already did know. There was nothing this woman, with her pink cheeks and salt and pepper hair, could tell her that she had not already imagined for herself.
‘And what brings you back to the island my dear?’
‘I was in Oban. I thought I might go up to Dunshee. ‘
The woman frowned. ‘But surely … he’s still up there. Not that we see much of him in the village. God knows what he eats. He drinks plenty though.’
‘I know. But I thought I should go and see him.’
‘Oh my dear. I don’t think he’ll welcome you.’
‘All the same, I have to go.’
India got back into her car and ploughed on. Max, from the band, big, cheerful Max who was in love with her, had offered to go with her. She had turned him down, wanting to make the journey alone, but now she began to wish that she had let him come.
On the way to Dunshee, she made a small detour to the cemetery. The place was tidy as usual, and somebody had left a posy of evergreens beneath the headstone – holly, ivy and a few larch cones twined together. She had bought a bunch of flowers on the way through Oban that morning, and she arranged them in the vase, her fingers clumsy with the cold, wondering how long the carnations would last in the wind that blasted around the granite headstones, and threatened to carry the old stones of the kirk with it. The evergreens were a better choice.
She didn’t linger long here. If Ceit was anywhere, she thought, it wasn’t in this sad place, although she could imagine other windy hillsides that might draw her. She clambered back into the warmth of the car and set the heater as high as it would go. Then she drove on towards Dunshee.
The lower parts of the familiar track were a sea of chocolate brown mud. Higher up, long neglected ruts played havoc with her tyres. Freezing rain was blowing in from the west, horizontal rain that blinded her and she almost drove into the ditch, stopping herself from veering off the track, just in time. ‘Why am I doing this?’ she thought.
He didn’t answer at first. She had to hammer on the door with her fists. And then he was standing in the doorway, staring down at her through half shut eyes. He had never run to fat but she always thought of him as being fit and muscular. Now his clothes hung off him and his thinness made him seem even taller. His hair had gone grey, and his face was stony. She had a nightmare about him afterwards. She dreamed that he had turned into one of the ancient monoliths that walked the fields below the farm. It struck her that if she had met him down in the village, she wouldn’t have known who he was.
He seemed disinclined to move from the threshold, but eventually motioned her in, grudgingly.
‘How are you?’ he asked, and his tongue sounded thick in his mouth, though she couldn’t tell whether it was because of the drink, or simply because he so seldom spoke to anyone these days. He had always been taciturn, but now the power of speech seemed to be deserting him altogether.
She chattered away, trying to fill the silence, telling him about her recent tour, and the CD and the television appearance.
‘The fiddle,’ she said. ‘I still play my grandad’s old fiddle you know. The one he taught you to play.’
He stirred at that. ‘Oh yes. A bit. He taught me. It had a good sound. But I was never… I could never…‘ His trailed off into silence.
He made her some tea, and the mug was chipped and dirty but she drank it anyway, because she was afraid of upsetting him. He looked ill and he stank of stale whisky. There was such misery about him. He couldn’t contain it within himself. It spilled out and filled the whole house like water finding its own level. The house was stifling with it. India found that she could hardly breathe in there. Besides, the whole place stank of cats.
Her mother had loved cats – India did herself – but she realised that Darragh had just started to let them come and go as they pleased, and they had bred, unchecked, tabby with ginger, feral with domestic. When she looked around the room she saw hostile yellow eyes in all the dark corners. That frightened her as well. The fire in the kitchen range was burning, but it was choked, so there seemed to be no heat in it. It gave her a sudden pang of despair. The fire at Dunshee had always blazed bright and warm, no matter what else might be going wrong with their lives. Now the house was smothered in dust and the fire was a weary smoulder of smoke and ash.
‘I have something for you’ he said. ‘Something that you ought to have.’
He got to his feet and shambled up the stairs. She could hear them creaking beneath his feet. Left alone, she poured the tea down the sink, and rinsed away the evidence, though it was so grimy, so clogged with dust and tea leaves, that nobody would have noticed, least of all Darragh.
She sat down again, and stared out of the window, listening to the whine of the wind in the chimney. She ought to be going. She knew from bitter experience that, if the weather deteriorated any more, the next ferry might be the last of the day. She heard faint footsteps, moving over the floor above. Then nothing. Where was he? A thin ginger cat, more daring than the rest, emerged from its hiding place, and batted at her foot with a tentative paw.
‘Where is he then?’ she asked but the creature only gazed back at her with large golden eyes, it’s pupils shrunk to tiny slits.
Eventually, she got up and climbed the stairs in search of him. She knew where he would be, and went straight into her mother’s bedroom. He was there, crouching in the shelter of the box bed. Her entrance startled him; a tremor ran through his whole body.
‘I was worried about you’ she offered.
‘I thought you should have these.’
She saw that he was holding a faded green cardboard folio, tied up with black tape.
‘What are they?’
He thrust the folder at her. ‘Your mother’s. Some of the last things she did.‘
‘Paintings?’
‘Drawings. Take them.’
She made as if to open the folio but he shook his head. ‘No. Take them away. Don’t open them here. I don’t want to look at them.’
‘Alright.’
‘ I never thought she would leave me.’ The words erupted from him. He shook his head and clamped his mouth firmly shut again. His fists were clenched on his knees. His face had an awful blankness. It was as though the struggle not to give in to despair had left him unable to manage any other expression but this mask.
‘No. None of us wanted her to leave,’ she said gently. ‘I miss her all the time.’
‘Do you?’ For the first time he looked directly at her.
‘Oh Darragh…’
He shook his head, looking away.
‘I have to try not to think about her. I have to make a wee space in my day when I don’t think about her. I’m not very good at it. The whisky helps. There’s nothing else.’
‘Come downstairs now. She isn’t here.’
‘Don’t you think I don’t know that? Why does she never come to me, India?’
India felt the lump in her throat. It was a question she had asked herself more than once. ‘I don’t know Darragh. The dead don’t obey our rules, do they? I just sometimes think….’
‘What?’ he asked and she could see that he was clutching at anything that might help.
‘Oh I don’t know. Just that maybe they are here, all the time. Only we’re so sad and sorry that we’re blind and dumb to them. Our own sorrow obscures everything.’
‘Do you think that could be true?’
‘Maybe.’
She went to the door of the room, and saw to her relief that he was following her. ‘I have to go, Darragh. I’m playing tonight. In Oban.’
‘Your grandad’s fiddle?’
‘That’s right. ‘
‘He would have liked that.’
‘He would.’
Pity for him brought tears to her eyes, but she knew that there was nothing she could do about it. He didn’t want her. He didn’t care whether she stayed or not. He wouldn’t care if he never saw her again. At the door she reached out her hand but at the last minute she changed her mind, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. Then she headed back to her car. Her last image of him, as she turned around to wave, was of him raising his fingers to his cheek, and touching the place where her lips had just brushed the prickly skin. Without looking back again, she got into her car and drove away.
Back at her mainland hotel, with the smell of cats and whisky lingering in her nostrils, she ordered a pot of tea and some sandwiches and tugged at the knots on the folio. The tapes had been pulled tight, and she had to tease them apart with a pin. Inside was a sheaf of sketches, mostly in charcoal, although a few were in pen and ink. India drew them out, one at a time, and laid them on the bed. She thought she had seen most of Ceit’s work: all those landscapes, all those studies of the island flora and fauna that seemed to capture the very essence of the plant, the bird, the animal. When Ceit had painted the island in spring, when primrose and violet vied with each other for space, or when all the lanes were dazzling corridors of golden whin, there was something savage about the resulting pictures, nothing like the genteel watercolours to be found in most Highland galleries.
But these were different again, thought India, frowning at them. Most of Ceit’s paintings were full of light, as vibrant as she had once been herself. These were stark studies in black and white, light and shade, Gothic in their intensity. They were more like illustrations for a book, but what book could that possibly be? Staring at them, one after another, she had to suppress a shudder.
There was a knock on the door, and Max came in. He had showered and his hair was a damp blonde cascade. He looked relieved to see her.
‘Thank God you’re back’
‘I told you I wouldn’t be long.’
‘I thought you might get stranded. How was your island?’
‘Cold and wet and windy.’
‘And….?’
‘Darragh?’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t ask.’
‘You should have let me come with you.’ His gaze alighted suddenly on the pictures. ‘Wow!’
‘I know.’
‘Whose are they?’
‘My mum did them.’
‘Christ!’ He came over and slipped his arm around her shoulders, and they stared at the pictures together.
They were studies of human beings. They couldn’t be called portraits, because they were largely unrecognisable, although there was one very bold sketch of a man, just head and shoulders, with a background of dark cross hatching, and the face just angles and planes of light, that India thought she recognised as Darragh – a much younger Darragh for sure, but with a haunted, haunting quality about the face, as though the artist had foreseen his solitary future with horrible clarity. One of the sheets showed two figures so closely entwined that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and another began or to say which limb belonged to which person, and it was so full of a dark, heavy sensuality that India found herself blushing. In one sketch, the female seemed to be stabbing her partner in the thigh with a dagger, or was she pulling the knife from the wound? Another had the suggestion of a great mass of roots and rocks in the foreground, with – when you looked more closely – human bodies emerging from the landscape or perhaps becoming a part of it, hands, torsos, legs, all with a sense of movement, struggle, striving to escape. Or was it a striving to be absorbed? There were simpler studies of two children, a boy and a girl maybe, swiftly drawn lines, just an impression of hair and arms and long legs. One of them gave India a start, in that it looked very like herself. She had just such a photograph of herself, when she was a little girl, on the island. Only, thought India, when you looked long enough, you began to wonder if these were not children, but birds of some sort, long legged herons, perhaps. In another, the same two children seemed to have impossibly long arms which were forming an arch across something that was surely …
‘Christ, that’s a gravestone’ said Max. ‘These are very strange drawings India.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘When did she do them?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe in those last years. I’ve certainly never seen them before….’
‘And look at this one.’
It was a kiss but there was something savage about it, the lips, and indeed the two heads so fused together, that once again, it was difficult to say where one ended and the other began. The thought entered her head, but seemed so crazy that she couldn’t voice it. Were they kissing or feasting off each other?
‘Did you know about these?’
‘Not a thing. Darragh gave them to me. He said I should have them. Now I’m beginning to wish he hadn’t. Look, there’s a little bird down in the grasses. Here. And here, on this one as well.’ She sifted through the pictures. ‘And here too.’
‘Are they signed?’
‘Some of them. Just a letter C. That was all she ever did. Her initial. They don’t look anything like her usual stuff.
‘They’re very disturbing.’
India began to gather them together. ‘They are.’
‘What will you do with them?’
‘Right now, I’m going to put them away and try to forget about them. ‘
‘Easier said than done.’
‘I know. But I’ve got more important things to worry about.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m going to have a shower, get changed.’
‘Will you show them to your dad?’
India shook her head. ‘No way. And don’t you go telling him either. I know what you’re like after you’ve had a few drinks. These are mine. Darragh gave them to me. Dad’s fine. He’s happy now. I don’t want to go dragging up all that… well, you know.
‘Yeah’ said Max, and bent to kiss her on the forehead. ‘Yes Indie, I do know. I’ll keep my mouth shut. But …’
‘But what?’
‘That.’ He nodded at the folio. ‘Bit like carrying Pandora’s box around with you, isn’t it?’
‘Not if nobody else knows I’ve opened it.’
He left her to get ready for the show. But even then she found herself staring at the green card cover of the folio, its contents indelibly imprinted on her mind’s eye. Later, when she was playing, she was still seeing them, and the sensuousness of those dark embraces somehow translated itself into her music. Never had she played so magically. Never had she played with such passion.
CHAPTER TWO
All day long, the boy had been labouring in the sandy fields. Only the day before, Ceit had overheard her grandfather saying ‘he works like a grown man, that one.’ The year was 1963. She was eight years old and he was twelve; a big, strong boy for his age, one of the Irish tattie howkers, who came every summer to help with the potato harvest. She was an only child, living with her widowed mother and her grandfather at a farm called Dunshee, perched high up on the windy spine of the island, with its fields sweeping down to the sea.
Dunshee was an ancient, slate roofed building with dormer windows on the upper floors. It was set on a plateau of high land, slightly at angles to the sea, to take advantage of the shelter afforded by an uneven ridge behind it. It had weathered grey stones, and peeling green paint. Outside was a flower garden crammed with sea-friendly hebes, hydrangeas and fuchsias. There was a clean courtyard, with byres and barns, a dairy and what had once been stables because it wasn’t that long since the islanders had used horses to work the land.
She came running up the hill from school, in her red summer sandals, with her leather satchel on her back, and saw her grandfather, leaning on the field gate, staring down at the workers, with a frown on his face. She distracted him by running to him, and he swung her up in the air, her pigtails flying. She loved to feel his big hands birling her round and round. Fields and sky blurred around her and then she was on her feet, holding onto his legs to steady herself. It frustrated her that there were no other children on the farm and only a handful in the village. There was so much to tell, and so few people to listen.
‘Ceit, my wee Ceit!’ he said. ‘Did you have a good day?’ He lifted his cap and replaced it more comfortably on his head, a habitual gesture.
It was almost holiday time, but they never went away. There was too much to do about the farm at this time of year and her grandfather seldom left the island except to go to the cattle market on the mainland. Once or twice, her mother had taken her to stay with relatives in Glasgow, in October, but summers were invariably spent at home.
Her grandfather singled the boy out from the others, and called him over.
‘You there! Come here to me!’ he shouted.
The boy shambled up to the gate, wiping the sweat from his face with a grimy hand.
‘Yes mister?’ he said. He looked ready to shy away, as though expecting a blow, but her grandfather told him to knock off early, have something to eat, take a rest.
‘For God’s sake’ he said abruptly, almost angrily. ‘Take a rest for God’s sake!’
The boy looked puzzled but obediently followed them in the direction of the farm, veering towards the barn where the tattie howkers always slept.
In the summer, when the nights were light, Ceit was allowed to stay up late and wander where she pleased, so long as she stayed away from dangerous machinery, (they had drummed the danger of tractors into her so thoroughly that she couldn’t see the old red Ferguson without a thrill of horror) or the precipitous cliffs on the far western side of the island. But there was no-one to play with. There were only half a dozen children at the island primary school, and most were much older or younger. Miranda from the big house, was just a little older than Ceit, a year maybe, but she already went to boarding school on the mainland. She spent most of her holidays in London, and only visited the island occasionally. Even then, she hardly acknowledged Ceit’s existence, but once she had sat in church and pulled faces at Ceit during the whole long sermon. Ceit had responded in kind, indignant but enthralled, until her mother noticed, and shook her by the shoulder, hissing ‘Will you stop that nonsense!’ It might have been the start of a friendship, but afterwards Miranda had swept past with her parents and her brother Oliver and didn’t so much as glance in Ceit’s direction.
Ceit climbed up the rocky slopes behind the farmhouse, scrambling through heather and bracken that was almost as high as she was, rousing unpleasant clouds of crane flies that blundered about her head, till she reached the summit, a wide saucer of land, which sloped gently to a tumble of rocks in the middle. From the furthest lip of this saucer, she could see the blue-grey expanse of the western sea, pied here and there with patches of wind. Her grandfather called this place Hill Top Town. That’s what she called it herself, though sometimes she wondered why there was no town here at all; only this shallow bowl of land with jagged rocks, a thin covering of lumpy turf, and drifts of purple thyme papering the crevices. It was her favourite place. Her secret place. Her palace, her fortress, her sanctuary.
Except that, tonight, there was an intruder. The Irish boy was sitting on the western lip of this hill top depression, looking out at the sea, shading his eyes against the setting sun. She was not dismayed by his presence, only curious. His shoulders were hunched and, even from behind, he looked dejected, so because she was only eight and not yet shy of boys, she went and plumped herself down beside him.
‘Hello!’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
He turned to look at her. ‘Just sitting’ he said. ‘Why? Am I not allowed?’
‘Why should you not be allowed?’
He didn’t reply. There were so many things the visiting Irish were not allowed to do. They were allowed in the public bar of the hotel, but not in the lounge. They were not made welcome in the shop. They were not supposed to light bonfires, or stray too far from the farms where they were working. If anything went missing, however small, they were blamed. The most that had ever gone missing on the island was a clutch of eggs or the odd turnip out of the fields, but they were blamed anyway. They must always be watching their step for fear of putting a foot wrong. That’s what her grandfather said about it, and as far as Ceit was concerned, her grandad’s word was law.
‘And why not?’ said her mother. ‘You know as well as I do what they are like!’ But her grandfather would never agree.
‘We are the same blood’ he said, strangely, and Ceit had no idea what he meant.
She looked sideways at the boy. It didn’t seem to her as though they could possibly have the same blood. He was very dark, with sooty hair like her favourite cat and a face burnt by exposure to sun and wind. But he had beautiful eyes like little fishes. He seemed too old and grown-up to be a playmate. He looked very sad, and she saw that there were tears on his eyelashes, and her own eyes filled up in sympathy.
‘Ooh don’t cry’ she said, and watched as he rubbed his eyes fiercely with a grubby hand leaving dark smudges around them.
‘I’m not cryin’’ he said, angrily. ‘The wind’s in me eyes. That’s all.’
She didn’t know how to reply to this. Surreptitiously she lifted the hem of her skirt and pulled a faded blue handkerchief out of her navy knickers. ‘Here’ she said. ‘You can have my hankie anyway.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘But look at you, you’re all muddy.’ She licked her hankie, and wiped briskly at his cheeks, the way her mother sometimes cleaned her own face and hands when there was no soap and water near.
He started to laugh. ‘I’m alright’ he said pushing her away. And his accent was funny. He took the hankie from her and rubbed his eyes. When he handed it back to her, it was streaked with sandy marks of soil from his face and fingers.
‘What do you do with your handkerchiefs?’ said her mother later. But she wouldn’t tell.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.
She was a great one for names.
‘You have to know the names of things, Ceit - trees, plants, birds, flowers.’ That’s what her grandfather always told her. ‘They all have their own names, and you should know what they are. It’s no good being careless about such things.’
Her grandad knew the names of all the wild flowers which grew on the island and she liked to file the words away in her mind. Bogbean and ladies tresses. Speedwell and celandine. She liked to say the words aloud. She liked the sounds that they made on her tongue. It was almost as though she could taste the words themselves like the luscious bramble and the glossy but bland crowberry. And the words themselves had colours. Even more than saying them, she liked to draw and paint them.
Ever since she could hold a pencil in her fat little fingers, Ceit had loved to draw. When she ran out of drawing paper, she had drawn on the endpapers of books, or in the farm account books, or sometimes on the wallpaper in her bedroom. Eventually, her grandfather had persuaded Mrs McGregor in the village shop to stock large pads of coarse cartridge paper, paints, paint brushes and soft pencils, and kept Ceit well supplied with them. She liked to make pictures of flowers and birds and animals, and the kitchen wall was full of them, all sellotaped together, because her mother could never bear to throw any of them away.
‘Darragh’ said the boy. ‘My name’s Darragh Martin.’
‘Darragh’ she repeated, the way he said it. ‘Da-ra.’ Liking the sound of that as well. ‘Are you from Ireland like the rest of them?’
He pointed to the south west where the sea glittered in the sunlight. ‘Over there.’
‘Are you homesick?’
He considered this for a moment. ‘Maybe I am. But I don’t know why.’
‘Why don’t you know why?’ She was a persistent child. She would follow a question to the bitter end and beyond.
‘Because I don’t like it at home.’
‘Oh.’ She nodded sagely. He must know what he was talking about. But she didn’t really know what he meant.
‘Is your mammy not here with you?’ she asked. The women and men who came over from Ireland for the potato harvest worked together but they always slept in separate barns for decency’s sake.
‘No. She’s not with me.’
‘You must miss your mammy though’ she said after a pause.
‘Yes, I miss her. But I don’t live with her.’
‘Do you not? ‘
‘No. They won’t let me. I live on a farm in Donegal.’
‘Is it nice?’ she asked.
‘No it isn’t.’
‘Is it anything like this one?’
‘It’s smaller than this one. But the people are….’ He hesitated. ‘They won’t let me go to see my mammy.’
She wondered who ‘they’ were and how they could be so cruel. But although she wanted to pursue this she realised that it might not be polite so she sat still for a moment and thought of something else to say. He had not asked her name. She was surprised by his lack of curiosity, but she ventured the information anyway. ‘I’m Ceit. You say Kate but you spell it c-e-i-t.’ She spelled out the letters the way they said them at school. ‘Ceit Galbreath.’
He nodded but said nothing, just sat there staring out to sea and picking at the purple thyme flowers and the small grasses.
‘It’s nice up here, isn’t it?’ she offered, after a bit.
‘It’s alright.’ He looked around as though seeing it properly for the first time.
‘This is the best place on the whole island. This is Hill Top Town.’
‘I thought it was Dunshee.’
‘No’ she said, ‘Not the farm. That is Dunshee. I mean this bit. Up here. Hill Top Town. That’s what my grandad calls it. That’s what everyone calls it, though there’s no town here that I can see.’
‘There is no town. You’re right.’
‘I asked my grandad and he said there might once have been one, a long time ago.’
‘Maybe so. You mean down there?’ He turned to look into the shallow bowl of land with its scattering of grey rocks, which formed the summit of the hill.
‘That’s right. And do you see the part where the flags grow, the yellow irises there? That usually means water. A spring maybe. And that means a village.’
‘Is that so?’
‘My grandad said so.’
‘And he’s always right, your grandad?’
‘Of course’ she said, and he didn’t have the heart to laugh at her.
‘Is this your first time here?’ she asked him.
‘It is.’
‘And how long will you be staying?’
He shrugged. ‘A few weeks. We’ll be working on the other farms and maybe going to some of the other islands, but we’re to live here at Dunshee mostly.’
‘That’s good’ she told him. She stood up, levering herself off the ground with her hand on his shoulder.
‘Why is it good?’
‘Because I don’t have many people to play with and you can come out with me so long as you’re here.’
‘They won’t let me do that.’
‘They will so. My grandad will. He’ll let you if I ask him. You don’t work on Sundays, do you?’
She could twist her grandad around the smallest of her small fingers. ‘Leave the child be,’ he often said to her mother. ‘She’s alright. Let the child do what she wants. She’s doing no harm.’
‘You spoil her’ said her mother.
‘And why not? What else would I be doing with my one and only grandchild? Besides. How can you spoil someone by loving them?’
Do you like fishing?’ she asked him, on a sudden inspiration.
‘Maybe.’
‘I’ve got a rod. We can go fishing. There’s a loch with trout. It belongs to the estate but my grandad’s allowed to fish there. It’s not far. ‘
‘I don’t know …’ he hesitated. ‘I’m here to work.’
‘You’ll get a bit of time off to go fishing though’ she told him. ‘I’ll ask my grandad if you can come with us.’ He would say yes. She was the apple of his eye. ‘Listen, we’ll take you fishing. Me and my grandad. And there’s the beach down there. We can go to the beach some days. Make sandcastles. Swim. It’ll be good. You’ll see.’
As an adult, Ceit often found herself rehearsing this first conversation in her mind, polishing the story like a beach pebble, making it perfect in her memory. What was it about him that so drew her to him? Was it pity for his loneliness? Curiosity about the stranger – for there were few visitors to the island? Or just a childish perception of his need; the same instinct that made her so anxious to bottle feed the orphan lambs for her grandad? And she was good at it as well. ‘Nobody can bring them through like my Ceit,’ he told everyone proudly.
Darragh Martin looked up at her as she stood over him, small and ingenuous, her red hair in two fat crinkly plaits hanging on either side of her freckled face, and he grinned at her. ‘Alright’ he said. ‘If you like. I don’t mind if I do. ‘
A day or two later she asked her grandfather about the fishing.
‘Is this wise?’ asked her mother, but Alasdair just shrugged.
‘Why not? He’s only a young lad. He needs a wee holiday now and then. The work’s back breaking. Even our own lads have a spell once in a while. He’s young to be over here – God knows why he was even sent here with nobody to keep an eye on him. The money I suppose. It could only be the money.’
‘Heavens above! Why would anybody need to keep an eye on him?’
‘You wouldn’t like to see our Ceit in the same situation.’
‘That’s a different matter altogether and well you know it. But taking him fishing now… making a favourite of him…. I just think…’
‘What?’
‘Is it quite suitable?’
‘Don’t be so po-faced woman.’ It was the mildest of rebukes but her mother knew when she was beaten. Alasdair only ever bothered to argue with his daughter-in-law about points of principle but then he was unmoveable.
Alasdair often took Ceit fishing to the loch, at the back of Ealachan House, the ‘big house’. Alasdair Galbreath was on friendly terms with Malcolm Laurence, who practically owned the whole island, and had stocked the loch with trout. Alasdair was casually deferential. He would have preferred it if he were not a tenant farmer, if the farm was his own but permission to fish was one of the perks of the tenancy. He was teaching Ceit to cast. The rod was long and too heavy for her, but she managed, and was proud of herself.
Sometimes they met Malcolm’s son, Miranda’s elder brother, Oliver. He was also away at school during term time but he spent at least part of his summer holidays on the island. The family had a house in London, but twelve year old Oliver was said to be ‘chesty’ and they sent him north for his health. Ceit and her grandad often saw him, walking the island paths with his black Labrador at his heels, looking like a youthful version of his father. He wore the same tweedy clothes, the same polished brogues. His appearance always exasperated Alasdair.
Tonight, they met Oliver on their way to the loch. He whistled his over- exuberant dog to heel and wished them a polite good evening.
‘Spot of fishing eh?’ he said, like a little old man.
‘Just a spot’ said Alasdair and walked on.
‘Nice evening for it.’
‘It is indeed.’
‘Would you look at that?’ said Alasdair to Darragh, when he had gone past. ‘He’ll be my landlord one day! May the good lord keep Malcolm Laurence safe and sound.’
Darragh said nothing, just grinned and whistled through his teeth.
‘Don’t you like Oliver?’ asked Ceit. ‘I think he’s a nice boy. Much nicer than his horrible sister.’ She screwed up her nose at the thought of Miranda.
‘Oh he’s fine’ said Alasdair, patting her on the head. ‘Don’t you waste your time worrying about Oliver Laurence, my wee lamb. He doesn’t need your sympathy.’
At the loch, Ceit practised her casting for a while, and then lent Darragh her rod very willingly. It was her great-grandfather’s old rod, in smooth greenheart , with brass fittings. It was too heavy for her to handle, but fine for Darragh who – so her grandad said – was very big for his age. She sat in the shade among the creamy meadowsweet and watched him fish. She noticed that he was left-handed, like her grandfather.
Alasdair was being quietly kind to Darragh.
‘Come on lad’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you can do.’
It was very warm beside the loch. When you breathed in, you could feel the heat in your mouth and lungs, a sense of suffocation. Ceit judged – with some satisfaction - that Darragh wasn’t quite as competent as she. There were tiny green spiders among the meadowsweet and they scuttled over her hands and legs and tickled her as they went. She lifted her hand and watched as one of them dived into space, swinging from its own silk, trapezing from her finger. Carefully she lowered it to the ground, making sure that it landed in a hollow below a stone, not wanting to squash it when she got to her feet. The smell of cut grass drifted across from the gardens at Ealachan and fused with the musky scent of meadowsweet and the cool scent of water.
She raised her eyes and saw Darragh, a dark silhouette, obliterating the sun. Her grandad had been showing him how to cast properly. ‘Tick Tock’ he said, to time the cast. She was already proud of having a big boy for a friend. She heard the plop as the float hit the surface and saw the widening rings out on the water as fish rose to flies but not to her grandad’s bait. Or Darragh’s either, for that matter. She felt the nip of the midges on her arms and legs and slapped at them but they were persistent. She was afraid that they would have to go home before they had caught anything. Over in the woods beside Ealachan house she could hear the din of rooks beginning to circle, thinking about roosting, jostling for position.
Seeing that they hadn’t caught anything, Alasdair used ground bait, which was something that he wasn’t supposed to do, and they caught two fat trout in a matter of minutes, which was the maximum he was allowed by the keeper. He despatched each fish with a single blow from his wooden ‘priest’, the small heavy cosh which he kept in his fishing bag . Then they took them home to Dunshee where her mother gutted them and cooked them in a frying pan on the top of the stove. The house was warm and cluttered. The kitchen was home to an old Scots dresser, with a row of small spice drawers along the top and a row of deeper drawers set over the base. There was an ancient spinning wheel in one corner. Every room in the farmhouse had its share of ornaments: Doulton figurines in the best sitting room, pottery cows and horses, and a collection of lustre jugs in the kitchen,. Each room had its own fireplace too, and even now, in the middle of summer, the fire in the kitchen range was blazing warmly.
The wireless was playing Scottish dance music. It was a big, boxy affair with exotic names like Hilversum and Luxemburg on the dial. In use, it grew very warm, and the cat liked to sit on top of it with the music spilling out of his soft body. Darragh gazed at the wireless as though he had never seen anything like it before.
‘I should be getting back to the barn now’ he said, uncertainly.
‘Not at all!’ her grandfather told him, pulling out a chair for him. ‘What’s the point of catching the fish if you don’t get to eat them afterwards?’
Ceit saw that her mother would prefer it if Darragh went back to the barn but she said nothing. He stayed to eat with them: fried trout and boiled potatoes and scones made with buttermilk and baked in the oven at one side of the kitchen fire. All the bread and cakes were baked in this oven. Ceit liked to help, liked to watch her mother throwing flour into the bottom of the oven. If it burned, the oven was too hot. If it stayed white, the oven was too cool. If it went pale golden brown, the oven was just right. There was something infinitely satisfying to Ceit about this simple formula although she couldn’t explain why. Sometimes she lay in bed at night, imagining herself as a grown-up woman, in charge of the house, tossing flour into the oven. Trying to get the temperature exactly right.
Darragh sat at their table and ate ravenously, glancing over his shoulder from time to time. He held his arms protectively around his plate and forked the fish and potatoes into his mouth, hardly pausing to chew between mouthfuls, burning his tongue on the delicious flesh.
‘Steady lad’ said Alasdair, watching him, his brow furrowed into a frown. ‘Steady on. You’ll need a wee pause between mouthfuls. You’ll not be wanting to choke yourself.’
Darragh looked up and Ceit thought that he reminded her of the farm dogs when they hunched protectively over a bone, casting dangerous, white eyed glances in all directions. Or perhaps he was more like the lonely crows that lurked about the farm, waiting to scavenge dead meat. But she said nothing. She found herself blushing for him.
Darragh saw them watching him. He coloured up as well, his cheeks scarlet beneath the brown of exposure to sun and wind. He moved his arms away from his plate and slowed down.
Isabel spooned out more potatoes for him but she snatched the spoon away quickly, Ceit noticed, as though she was feeding a wild animal.
‘Thanks’ he said. ‘Thanks very much missus.’ He looked up and flashed his sudden, disconcerting smile at her, but she turned away, without acknowledgement.
‘Alright?’ asked Alasdair.
‘Yes thanks.’
‘Good.’
Alasdair reached out and patted him on the shoulders.
‘Good lad’ he said. ‘Good lad.’
For the first time, Ceit felt something that she would always feel in Darragh’s company. She felt a sudden sense of proprietary pride in him, as though praise of Darragh was praise of herself, but it was compounded – as it always would be - by a sharp pang of jealousy. She wanted him all to herself. But she wanted her grandad all to herself as well.
‘Am I not good?’ she asked her grandfather, plaintively, to distract him.
‘Of course you are. You’re my Ceitag. My little lass!’ he said, turning from his plate to tug at her pigtails, tying them into a loose knot at the back of her neck. Ceit was ticklish. She hunched her shoulders and shivered but still she liked it when he teased her in this way. She glanced up and caught Darragh watching her, watching her grandfather. He looked hungry. That’s what she thought. But how could he be hungry when he was in the middle of eating? When he had eaten so much already?
‘Just eat your tea and stop your nonsense Ceit’ said her mother. As always. ‘Just finish your tea and be quiet now. And then Darragh had better get back to his friends in the barn.’
