Page 54 of Little Wing
‘Florence—’ she repeated unsteadily, looking at Al blankly. ‘Florence Something.’ She scratched at her memory. ‘I’ve gone completely blank.’ She felt her cheeks scorch with self-ridicule. She could cry. Wendy and Florence What? For fuck’s sakethink! And then suddenly her embittered spinster aunt sprang to mind and though mostly Nell banished thoughts of Marjorie, just now her presence was welcome. Dr M. Lawson.
‘Lawson,’ Nell said, the choke in her throat painful.
‘Florence Lawson,’ the man said thoughtfully.
Nell wrote the name on the next clear page of her notebook, eased the paper away from the steel rings and handed it to him.
‘I shall make enquiries,’ he told her. ‘There’ll be someone who knows – of that I’m sure.’ He looked at her enquiringly. ‘Have you had your dinner, Nell? Will I make you something?’
No one had called her by her name for days.
He watched her falter, her eyes fill. ‘A cheese toastie, perhaps? On the house,’ he added.
But Nell shook her head; the offer alone was nourishing enough. She thanked him and retreated to her room for the afternoon. She’d made a start and it had worn her out.
Florence Lawson. Arrived here 1969.
And Wendy Hartley, in her room a million miles away closed off from the real world, unaware that she had a daughter hunting for her sister.
It never left Dougie – his innate knowledge of the vagaries of the land when he ran. The contrast to London was stark. There, tarmac and kerb and concrete paving caused his legs to stammer and his breath to falter. Here, he could run for hours, his proprioception and endurance intuitive. Here he instinctively tempered his cadence and breathing; he could fleet-foot his way over the squelch of saltmarsh, spring between ankle-twisting tussocks, counteract the scuff and skid of unsurfaced track and road, propel himself from boulder to boulder, skip over burns and calibrate his footfall between firm sand or the suck of the shoreline. The main difference between running here or in London was that here, Dougie never looked down. Look down and you’re done.
It was his second morning and he was awake early, before his father. He made thick salty porridge and ate it standing up, looking out beyond the garden to the sea. He left no note – there was no need. Gordon would see that Dougie’s trainers were gone and there’d be nothing to worry about.
And so he ran; mile after mile through glens shaped when glaciers had bulldozed their way through, up hills scarified by the strips and ridges where man had worked the land over thousands of years. He ran alongside thegearraidh– the skinned ground where the peat had been dug down to the boulder clay. He ran through the bickering between rock and land, where elephantine slabs dominated a riot of acid greens, pale blondes and rust browns, red deer grass and heather and the white stars of bog bean. The air was pure and cold at this time in the morning, but there was a watery sun climbing into the sky and the cloud cover was scrawny. It was going to be another fair day and, by the time he arrived back at the beach, the terns and gulls were in full squabble above the running waves. The tide was retreating, leaving a sinewy network of rivulets and lagoons across the vast Luskentyre sands, and here Dougie sprinted hard until, finally, his lungs burned and he had to stop, his legs trembling and his heart pounding in his mouth, in his ears. He clasped his hands behind his head and panted against the gusts from the sea, then he stripped naked and strode over the sand into the water. The slashing cold lanced through to his bones and halted his breath completely. Facing away from the beach, from the house, finally Dougie cried out with everything he had. It was the sound of pain and of exhilaration, of torment and triumph, of love, loss and frustration, but the difference between them was indistinguishable and the sea swept them away.
What was he doing back here?
How was he going to leave?
Mr Buchanan says I’m to call him Iain.
He said, enough now, Flora – will you not just call me Iain?
Every day he cycles to work south along the coast towards Leverburgh. He is something to do with seaweed – he says they make puddings from it, which quite turned my stomach, and he saw my face and laughed. Mr Buchanan, I said, where I come from no one eats seaweed for dessert. I said, haven’t you heard of blancmange, Mr Buchanan? He laughed again and his face went as soft as George’s and he said, enough now, Flora – will you not just call me Iain?
For a while until it came naturally, I called him Mr Buchan-Iain. But now he’s simply Iain and we rub along fine. In the month that I’ve been here, I’ve kept myself busy. I’ve had to. I realized early on I have to occupy my time to stop everything grinding to a halt – which is when I think of Joan or Wendy or any of the others living their normal lives at precisely that moment. I’ve never been so completely on my own and I have had to fight hard not to feel just desperately lonely and blue. So I taught myself not to remember what my life once was, because it’s too big to think about and brings with it a horrid churn of emotions. I’ve learned that I must not recall Eld Lane or Castle Park or our corner shop or the walk to school or our amazing zoo that opened five years ago. Now I stop myself from conjuring my old room, the smell of my bed and the feel of my pillow, my things on the shelves that I had to leave behind. I don’t allow my mind to tour around the house. I cannot think of Joan because I miss her so desperately. Nor do I think of my mum because doing that rips my head and my heart into strips and twists them into one massive knot. I don’t think of Wendy because it makes me long for her daftness and her lovely face and her crazy talk. It’s hard not to think of George because Iain looks so similar – but he’s not George.
I absolutely do not think about Peter. He’s not a part of any of this. It’s easy not to think about any of that.
But I do think about my dad. He is company that it is safe for me to keep because nothing has changed there.
So with all the time thatnotthinking frees up, I’ve taught myself this and that. On the shelves to the side of the fireplace are folded maps of the islands and books on birds and flowers. There’s a dictionary, a really huge old Bible, a book in Gaelic calledGràs am Pailteas, a weighty tome on Scottish history and a slim leather-bound edition of poetry by Robbie Burns which I try to read out loud. The more ridiculous an accent I put on, the more understandable the poems become and I love them. But best of all is Mrs Buchanan’s box of recipe cards, which Iain has translated for me. Her writing is so neat and chatty that I feel like she’s here. She’s taught me to how to bake fruity bannock cakes and I can make her lovely Cullen skink soup – with smoked haddock, onions and potatoes. I cook supper for us every evening and Iain leaves porridge for me on the stove as he goes out to work early. It’s salty – but I’ve grown used to it. Iain says he’ll teach me to skin a rabbit but I’m in no hurry for that. The first week I was here he presented me with ‘poached salmon’ but it was whole and raw, in fact it was quite fresh out of the water. Then I realized he meant he’d gone poaching for it. Most Saturdays he disappears at night – and on a Sunday, we have salmon. He taught me to gut the fish after which I fried it with a little butter and it tasted heavenly. I bake delicious pies and puddings and I don’t use seaweed in any of them.
Every single day I go for a walk on the beach, weaving my way through the acres of marram grass. Sometimes the wind is so vicious it whips up the sand, which can give you quite a thrashing. Even when the rain comes down in heavy curtains, sweeping from the sea and across the land all day long, I’ll still go out. Whatever the weather, I don’t see a soul. Beyond the dunes are the start of the endless Luskentyre sands which run for miles. According to the weather and the tide, sometimes rivers and lakes will appear across the vast beach and there’s no way through other than to swim. Iain told me that after winter storms, the dunes can change shape entirely. The sand here is white, it’s actually shell sand and the islanders of old saw how it was spread by the wind over land near to the coast and the soil became really fertile, that if they dressed it with seaweed it made for sweet grazing pastures. They’d graze it in the winter then take their sheep up to their summer shielings, up in the hills all summer, and let the land by the sea rest and burst into bloom. That’s how things grow here. Protected by the marram grass growing by the dunes and by the sea sedge, which acts as a soft green covering for other plants to take root. These sea meadows are called themachair. The flowers are here now and there are far more to come, Iain says. The rarest of birds visit, and the rarest of bees too. Sometimes all the mussells are open on the beach, they look like butterflies.
There’s a mobile shop we call the Van which stops nearby every week but I still like to cycle into Tarbert or Leverburgh for bits and pieces like finnan haddie, which is smoked haddock that I could eat by the shoal. There are currently sixteen shops, two cafés, the post office, the meeting hall, a Masonic hall, the Harris Hotel, two churches and a school. In town, there are a few people who greet me now. They call me Miss Buchanan or Flora Buchanan. These days, Florence Lawson just seems like an old nickname. It’s May; I’m gone five months pregnant and cannot be mistaken for chubby any more. There are some who look disapprovingly at me. There’s a busybody lady who’s always in the grocer’s, never shopping just gossiping , and she looks me up and down in a snooty way but the shopkeeper doesn’t; Morag is lovely to me.
I’ve noticed other girls around my age titter behind their hands if they see me while some look away quickly – as if they’ve been told I’m the lesson to be learned. Some do smile, though. There’s a girl called Jessie and we’ve snatched a chat now and then, mainly about music. She loves the Beatles. She told me she lives off the Golden Road and she laughed when I said wow! I also see Jessie when I go to church with Iain. It’s never really been my thing, church. I think religion causes wars. I think the world would be better off with a unilateral philosophy of peace, love and kindness. But I live here now and church is very much the way. In England I found church boring and cold and meaningless. These days, here, I find that church is somewhere to sit and have a think, I’m alone with my thoughts and yet I’m not alone. It’s also somewhere simply to be with other people – the community – because I can go days without seeing a soul, only Iain each evening for a few hours.
I sent Wendy a letter. I wrote to Joan too. There isn’t a telephone at Iain’s. I’ve heard nothing from anyone. It’s as if England has slid off the map of my world.
My world, though, is You.
It sounds stupid to say that I take you everywhere with me because of course I’m helpless not to. But I mean I’m never not aware and tuned in to you. Everything I see I describe to you; whatever I’m planning to do I tell you, too. I’ll explain how to cook Mrs Buchanan’s recipes, how to crumble up the butter against the flour for pastry, how to make oatcakes. I’ve described for you every step of our walks. In the house I ask you if you’d like a little Robbie Burns. Out on the road, I’ll tell you ‘nearly there, we’re nearly there’ when I have to get off the bicycle and walk the steep parts and then I promise you that we’ll go to Mary Munro’s Chip Shop when we get there.
You’re a night owl, doing cartwheels all evening and nudging me awake when I want to go to sleep. It’s like you’re saying ‘Be with me! be with me!’ I tell you about the weather as soon as I’m awake even though I sense you’re still asleep. We know each other off by heart.
All this newness isournewness. I’ll say look! a seal! We’ve learned the difference between the Atlantic grey seals with their roman noses and the harbour seals with their splotches and their gentler, dog-like heads. If Iain asks me about my day, I tell him about whatwe’vedone.Wethink we saw a Golden Eagle, I told him last week. He told us this: if you only ‘think’ you have, ’twas probably a buzzard. You’ll know when it’s an eagle, aye, he said.
