Page 83 of Little Wing
‘A mural,’ said Dougie quietly. ‘I’m telling you, this entire wall was covered with eddies and swirls of colours. The surface seemed to move – like a giant kaleidoscope. I remember a zebra. I can see its face, Nell – I know that face. It was over here – right here. And I remember butterflies too. Butterflies everywhere. The entire wall was all the blues and all the purples and silver and white. It was a night-time scene. It was magical.’
In their slim corridor between the junk and the clutter, Nell and Dougie stared at the wall, willing the white to recede.
‘It’s just white,’ said Nell.
‘But it washere– you have to believe me.’
‘I do,’ said Nell quietly, ‘I do.’ She was strangely touched by his frustration. ‘But it’s OK,’ she told him. ‘I’m resigned, now, to collecting other people’s memories in lieu of having any of my own.’ She shrugged and smiled sadly. ‘Anyhow, it’s way more than I had on Sunday.’
Dougie was staring at her intently, as if using her eyes like some sort of portal to the past. ‘A tea set,’ he said, brushing his hair away from his face. ‘I remember a tea set.’ He let go of her wrist and rubbed his eyes. ‘I remember making tea with a toy tea set.’ He touched her cheek, softly, quickly. ‘I remember making a little baby cups of toy tea. It was you. It wasyou.’
Nell didn’t know that a tear was going to rise and spill, but she let it and her voice, when it came, was a whisper. ‘Please – what else do you remember?’
The sunloungers were old-fashioned with metal frames supporting a sling of green canvas with eyelets all along the edges, through which thin plastic rope was spiralled to secure it. There were matching folding chairs as well, but they had been collapsed and propped against the side wall and hemmed in by a rusting barbeque. The loungers, however, locked open with age and beyond folding, had been left as they were and Nell took one and Dougie took the other and there they lay, curled on their sides, facing each other.
‘Bright red flowers,’ Dougie said. ‘A bright red flower pattern on a dress – and a matching hat.’
‘Me?’
‘The baby,’ said Dougie. ‘You. And songs and giggling – always. Inhere. Women – my mum.’
‘And Flora? Maybe?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The only face I truly remember other than my mum’s is the zebra’s.’
‘Written in your memory in black-and-white,’ Nell smiled.
Dougie laughed a little. ‘Except this zebra was navy and magenta and silver.’
Nell closed her eyes to try to imagine it. She conjured Dr Seuss and Walt Disney and a little ofWhere the Wild Things Are.
‘There was a day with a bucket – an old-fashioned steel bucket.’ Dougie seemed amazed at the sudden recall. ‘It was turned upside down as a seat for me. I’m kicking against it with my heels because the sound is so satisfying but I’m told off for waking the baby. The baby asleep on a sheepskin rug.’
‘Is this the same day?’
Dougie shook his head. ‘The bucket day was so warm in here – must’ve been high summer. The dress with the red flowers was a birthday party – yours, it must have been. But I so remember the tea set – it came in a little tin case painted to resemble wicker.’
Nell and Dougie looked at each other searchingly.
‘Seems that you’ve always been making me cups of tea, Dougie.’
Outside, the wind had lessened but the marram grass still waved; the sun was dissipating all but the most feathery high clouds. The machair was showing signs of what was to come: sea pink, daisy, harebell, knapweed, gentian, eyebright, centaury and orchid. At the shoreline, two otters gambolled in a slither amongst the seaweed. But inside, Nell and Dougie lay curled towards each other in the dusty quiet of the small storeroom that once had been a little studio. Their gazes were direct and intent, going way beyond the undoubted attraction of each other’s surface details and deep into the past; into thought, into emotion. Every now and then, their eyes met in the moment and the world at last seemed steady.
‘It was you,’ Dougie said quietly. ‘It was you.’
* * *
‘There was a zebra, wasn’t there? Fire – do you remember it?’
More than four hours had passed before Dougie and Nell returned. Roddy had been and fixed the car and idled over coffee with Sophia and Gordon. Gordon knew that the planned day trip would not happen now but he was fine with that as it left something unfinished for Dougie to commit to. He’d offered to drive Sophia to the White Cottage but she’d been reluctant, telling him they could well enough leave the kids to it. The truth was she didn’t much want to go back there. Gordon sensed it too, though he said nothing. So he made cheese sandwiches and they caught up on all their news. They talked fondly about his late wife and Gordon confided that no, Dougie didn’t come home much at all and that yes, it was upsetting but what could he do? The boy was a man who had chosen a life hundreds of miles away.
But now that man was a boy again, standing in his childhood home, asking about zebras.
‘Is it not there?’ Sophia asked. ‘Has it gone? All of it?’
‘It’s been painted over,’ said Dougie. ‘It’s not a studio any more.’
‘You loved that zebra,’ said Sophia. She turned to Nell. ‘Flora painted that back wall the most magical dreamscape.’
