Page 37 of Little Wing
‘What did Florence do?’
Her mother’s voice came hoarse and fragmented. ‘Bloody well went and got herself knocked up.’
‘What happened?’
‘I had to have the baby. I never had a baby. But I had to have Florence’s. After she’d gone.’
Nell thoughtlisten. She told herself to listen, to vanquish the adrenaline and just to focus. You’ve just heard it. There. You are not Wendy’s daughter but Florence’s. This is not your mother. This is your aunt.
‘Why?’
‘I had to have the baby – Mother said so. After.’
‘Afterwhat? After she’d gone where? Why couldn’t Florence keep her baby?’
Wendy didn’t answer or wouldn’t answer or couldn’t answer because now she was crying. Not crying – weeping. Not the usual histrionic overexcited sobbing that Nell had grown inured to, but with the hoarse depth of one who was broken. Nell went round from behind the chair and put her hands on her mother’s shoulders. They felt alarmingly bony, hollow somehow.
‘Is Florence’s baby Nell?’
Nell shook her.
‘Where is Florence? Is she alive? Dead?’
She shook Wendy hard, felt flesh slip off a rattle of bones.
‘Why couldn’t Florence keep her baby?’
She was shouting, she couldn’t help it. She shook her mother as if she was a rag full of dust and dead things. ‘Where is Florence? What’s happened to her? Why did you take her baby?’
And Sylvie came in. ‘Nell! Good Lord – what on earth is going on?’ Sylvie pushed Nell aside and wrapped Wendy in soothing tones and gentle hands. ‘There there, Mrs H. – what’s going on, eh? No need to upset yourself.’ She turned to Nell, appalled, disappointed, and she hissed. ‘What on earth, Nell – what do you think you are doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nell and she didn’t recognize her own voice. ‘I don’t know. She won’t say. She won’t say anything that makes any sense. Nothing makes any sense any more. Nothing.’
Gordon
Gordon Munro knew something was amiss – not wrong, not dangerously so, just not quite what it should be. Something was not right. His son, he sensed, was at odds in his world and that was not good, not good at all. Gordon lit his pipe, put a hand on Ben’s head and stared at the fire. Ever since he’d been a small boy, he’d always felt that the fire gave him what he needed. Warmth. Perfectly cooked toast. Herring cured to perfection. Hot water. Familiar peat reek. Comfort. Answers. Aye – Dougie wasn’t right. That business the other week – Dougie driving in a storm when he knew he hadn’t a chance in hell of making it. Telling Gordon he would only have had the one night anyway. And, since then, nothing. Two messages he’d left on the boy’s machine, the last five days ago. Now, that’s not like Dougie. They might neither of them be overly conversational on the phone – it’s an awkward thing, a voice coming disembodied down a wire with no face to read – but his boy always called him back before long.
In the fire, the flames licked and furled their way around the blocks of peat. It had been cold for late March these last days – bright but cold with it. He remembered Dougie as a wee one on days like these, how he’d say to Gordon that the sky said it was summer and please could he go swimming. How his wife, God bless her memory, would tell him no, you’ll catch your death and how Dougie would persist, saying he’d catch thesgadan, that’s what he’d catch – herring. Gordon looked at the hook at the top of the fireplace. How long had it been since thesgadanhad hung from there while the heat and the peat smoke worked on it until it was the most beautiful taste in the world? And how long had it been since his boy had been home, sitting on that chair there, enjoying the fire with his father?
Around the room Gordon’s eyes travelled. Everything in its place. Above, the sound old roof keeping out the elements, beneath his feet those flagstones rising and falling with the earth beneath and now worn smooth. When did his lad last skate over them in his socks? And here, his own father’s chair with the leather burnished now to a deep red – Gordon remembered it from his childhood being the colour of tablet. Near the fire, Ben’s basket and above it, Dougie’s photography books. On the wall, Dougie’s degree. My son the college graduate. My son the photographer. And Dougie’s mother had lived to know about both and though Gordon missed her, Lord how he missed her, he thought to himself how glad he was that she wasn’t sitting here worrying too. That she hadn’t lived through all that terrible business of what was it now, almost fifteen years ago. He’d never wanted her to worry about a thing, that’s why he’d married her, to protect her like the roof protected the house, to provide a foundation most solid, his arms around her like these very walls, strong and sheltering and standing the test of time.
This house of the Munros, for three generations, a breathing living member of the family. Old MacCuish had asked him the other day how long Gordon had lived there and Gordon had told him since the day he was born. Seventy-two years, coming. They were taking Old MacCuish to a flat, so they were, up in Stornoway. His children had paid a price for it – apparently it came with independence but also a buzzer he could ring if he needed assistance. Shopping delivered, if he so wished. Dominoes or cards, tea and company, downstairs every afternoon. So the MacCuish house was for sale – a sight none of them thought they’d ever see.
‘Not for us, Ben, hey laddie?’
The dog looked up at Gordon. Licked his lips and stared at his master beguilingly. Gordon chuckled. He would feed the dog, put the stew on and phone Dougie while it was heating. He levered himself out of the chair telling the dog, as he always did, that it was the old wood creaking, not his bones.
In London, the phone rang in Dougie’s flat. He knew it was going to be his dad and called himself a shit for not having returned those two other calls. He shouldn’t let it go through to the answering machine. But.
It was his dad. Of course it was.
‘Hello? Yes – hello? It’s your father, Dougie. Twenty-fourth of March. Hello? I’m telephoning you today – it’s Thursday – to say hello. To see how—’
The machine cut him off.
In the kitchen in Harris Gordon cursed under his breath, dialled again.
‘Yes, Dougie – it’s your father here. So! Well aye – you’re not in so I’ll just leave a message to say I was phoning to say hello. See if you’re there.’
