Page 88 of Little Wing
‘I forgot – you’ll know this road well enough yourself, by now.’
‘I do – I like that I do. I used to live here, you know.’
‘I saw you on the beach, on Sunday. You were – shouting at the sea. You were stomping on the sand.’
‘I was running out of time and there was no sign of Flora.’
‘You were in distress.’
‘I was. Shall I park here?’
‘Aye. Do that.’
‘Nell?’
‘I’m nervous.’
‘You want to take a minute? Is it too much?’
‘I’m OK. I’m OK. I’m just –nervous.’
‘And why wouldn’t you be? When you’re ready – only when you’re ready. We can just sit here awhile.’
The burial grounds at Luskentyre are both ancient and modern. Absent is the whimsy of the higgledy headstones of a crowded English country graveyard. Absent is the gut-wrench of the endless row upon neat row of a municipal cemetery. At the Luskentyre burial grounds – one old, one modern – the dead are laid to rest at a quiet but genial space from each other, on sweeping meadows protected by the dunes with a vantage point out over the sea. Many of the headstones face the sea, some don’t; those young laddies finally coming home from the Great War who drowned when theIolairewent down on New Year’s Day 1919, they look to the land.
The old burial ground, after a tight bend in the road and over a small bridge with a burn running, sits behind a stone wall. At the furthest point on the road is the new cemetery. Plots are spaced at respectful distances and headstones are in black, in grey, in white, each packed tight into the earth; steady, solid, enduring and from a distance not unlike sheep hunkering down close to the ground when the gales blow.
‘I don’t know where to find her,’ said Nell.
‘We’ll find her,’ said Dougie.
And he gave her his beanie again.
‘Well,’ he said after a while, ‘here’s my mum.’
Nell stood back as Dougie touched the headstone.
Ah – Mam. Miss you still. Aye, Dad’s all right, Dad’s the same. Aye, his health is good – still wearing down the paths with his walking. Me? My life is ridiculous but I’m going to make changes. I promise you. I’ll look out for Da. I will. You rest easy. All will be well.
‘Seventeen years,’ Nell said. ‘You must miss her still.’
Dougie nodded.
‘Were you close?’
‘Aye. She was an amazing woman. Took no nonsense and gave out love. She knew what to do. Always knew what to do.’
‘Was it hard for your dad?’
Dougie smiled sadly. ‘I heard him talking to her just the other day.’
‘We don’t have to leave – if you want more time?’
Gently, Dougie put his hand against the small of Nell’s back and guided her forward. In his head he could hear his mam saying, get going, laddie – you haven’t all day.
In the old burial grounds, eventually they found her. They found Flora. Some of the headstones were blurred with orange and grey lichen. There were family plots and war graves and the oldest, now just nubs of rock amidst a thicket of roses, belonged to those brought along the Coffin Trail during the Clearances. But they found her, they found Flora.
Nell pulled back and her breath caught because before she even reached the plot she somehow knew that it was her mother’s. Her world polarized just then. And though he stayed by her side, Dougie blended into the background. So did Colchester. And Wendy. The Chaffinch. Flying into Stornoway. The hotel room. The wall of photos in her kitchen. Nurse Keaton’s front room. Debbie’s front room. The Coronation teacup. Frank and his blackbirds. They were all part of someone else’s life because, just then, it was only Nell and Flora – exactly as it had been once, for twenty precious months.
