A Breath of Autumn Page 16
‘No one else up yet?’ he queried.
‘No, Jamie’s recovering from too much excitement or too much whisky. He puts in a hard enough day usually so I leave him alone when he chooses to take things easy.’
‘Seeing we’re alone then, I want to ask you to seriously consider coming out to live in Canada,’ he began. ‘I want you to be my housekeeper. I have a nice enough house and there are all sorts of gadgets for making life easier and there’d be help if you wanted it.’
She treated him to a gentle smile though she was shaking her head negatively.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You are still a youngish man Hugh, and it occurs to me that you might wish to marry again. A housekeeper would be in the way then.’
His jaw hardened. ‘I forbid you ever to speak to me again on that subject, Kirsty.’ His voice was stern and inflexible. ‘I adored my wife and I can never consider attaching myself to another woman. I swear she was truly my world, so never speak that way again please.’
She saw his tight-clasped hands and restrained herself from a murmur of sympathy. They were both sitting quietly when Jamie came into the room.
‘Jamie, would you consider taking me over to Clachan tomorrow? I would like to see the factor about a croft for Patrick.’ She didn’t mention that she wanted to visit the lairs.
‘Surely,’ he replied. ‘Anyone else fancy the trip?’
‘I’ll go and ask Dina,’ volunteered Hugh Roberton. ‘I guess she’d like to go.’
Next day when they set out across the Sound, the sky was blue and spread with thin white clouds that looked like combed tresses of silvery hair, and the breeze was pushing the sea into white wavelets. The others accompanied Kirsty on the bus trip to the village where the factor had his office, but when they suggested meeting at the hotel for a meal she made the excuse that she needed to visit the cobbler. Having completed her business with the factor, however, she found the cobbler’s tiny cluttered shop closed so she set off for the lairs.
It was a dreary place and obviously little attempt was made to keep it tidy. She had taken a bunch of heather from Westisle, but first she knelt to stroke the soft green grass that covered the mound. How much goodness and kindness lay there she meditated. How much love they had left behind. Women were not tolerated at burials in the lairs so she had not been present when the two Ruaris had been laid to rest but the sadness reasserted itself chillingly. Again she prayed, ‘Why, Dear God, why?’ knowing that countless folk asked themselves the same question time after time, year after lifelong year.
Resolutely she straightened herself, scattered the heather on the grave and wished the two Ruaris farewell.
After walking the mile or two to where the bus left for Clachan she found the others already waiting.
‘We’ve fairly enjoyed ourselves,’ said Jamie. ‘Did you?’
‘The factor is always very pleasant,’ she replied primly. ‘And he always gives me a cup of tea.’
The clothes she’d ordered from the catalogue arrived the following week. Dina supervised the trying on while Enac and Marney voiced their somewhat unenthusiastic approval. That night, when Hugh Roberton announced that he and Dina would be leaving the island en route for Canada at the end of the week, Kirsty experienced a sense of breathlessness. Jamie had already told her that he had booked their passages for the week following the Robertons’ departure. Her mind seemed to be in a confusion of dread and anticipation. She resolved to try to calm herself by collecting a few mementos she would like to take with her so she set out across the moors to gather one or two of the blooming wild flowers, intending to press them between the pages of an album along with a grouse feather and a fringe of hair from their Highland bull. Wee Ruari, with the help of the twins, proposed to gather shells and seaweed.
All too soon the day of departure came. Enac was prepared to move into the house and had been told to use the contents of the chest which the mother of the two Ruaris had set aside. The other chest which Ruari Mor had said was hers was packed and locked and ready for transport to Canada if she should send word that she required it.
Euan Ally and Patrick were taking Jamie, Kirsty and Wee Ruari on The Two Ruaris to the port, where they would spend the night with the postmistress before catching the early train to Glasgow. There, they would embark on the liner that would take them to Canada.
There was only a light wind and Kirsty stood outside the wheelhouse of The Two Ruaris enclosed by a sense of timelessness. She watched each cliff loom up from a thin attendant mist, supplicatingly it seemed to her, before allowing itself to merge once more into the familiar outline of the island.
The scene touched her heart, and Wee Ruari standing beside her reached for her hand.
‘You’re not crying are you?’ he demanded.
‘No, no,’ she denied. ‘Are you?’
He shook his head.
‘They’ll still be there when we come back won’t they?’ he asked wistfully.
She looked at him and smiled.
‘They’ll still be there,’ she assured him.
Copyright
First published in 2002 by House of Stratus
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Lillian Beckwith, 2002
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